WOi 



HIBRARY OF CONGRESS.* 



'|hap. HJ:}. |opgrisIit |fo 



' UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. % 



ft ^. * \ 




•V 








'^<-^ 



...^^ 




iogo.c 



OLIVER CROMWELL GRAY. 



A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE; 



WITH HIS 



FRAGMENTARY WRITINGS. 



''Disjecta Alembra." 




EDITED BY HIS NEPHEW, 

DAVID GRAY FICKES. 



PHILADELPHIA: (r'^ 

J. B. LTPPINCOTT & CO. 
1872. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S72J by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at W.ishiagton. 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

MY HUSBAND, 
OLIVER CROMWELL GRAY, 

I OFFER THIS 

BOUQUET OF THOUGHT. 

His poetic genius, no doubt, would discover, in this collection, flowers 

that are not tastefully trimmed, and those that may prove too frail 

to endure the rude winds of the critic's breath ; yet I candidly 

confess that, in their arrangement, my hand has been 

guided by the fear that, in casting away even one 

wee bud, I might thus reject a fragrance whose 

short life would serve to perpetuate the 

memory of that garden in which these 

blossoms grew. 

MARY C. GRAY. 
Ottawa, III. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

In Memoriam .......... 7 

Memoir ........... 11 

Masonic Oration ......... 54 

Anniversary Address on Robert Burns 90 



POEMS. 

The Worship of the Woods ....... 139 

The Sea-Coral's Dream ........ 142 

Lines written on the Death of John Campbell, of Piqua, Ohio . 148 

The Tell-Tale Fay 151 

Boyhood's Vision 156 

Lines to Greece 159 

Say, have you never seen on Earth ?...... 162 

Lines on an Indian Tomb ....... 164 

The Elfin Knight 167 

The Fairy's Song 173 

Minstrel's Song 174 

Poet's Lines . . . . . . . . . 177 

The Pearl-Maker 181 

Mary's Gifts 184 

The Song of the Atlantic Cable . . . . . . .185 

A* (V) 



vi CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Cliildhood Thoughts ........ 189 

Not at Home .......... 191 

Our Native Land 195 

I met her once .......... 197 

Lines to a Daffodil ......... 199 

To M. C. S .200 

The American Soldier's Funeral ...... 201 

To A. H. M 203 

In Album of M. S. ........ . 204 

England . . . . . . . . . . . 206 

To A. S. . . . . . , . ... . 207 

Impromptu to Mary C. G. . . . . . . . . 208 

In Album of E. W. S . 209 

Mary ............ 210 

Impromptu . . , . . , . . . .211 

In Album of S. A. B. . 211 

To Mary ... . . . . . . . . . 212 

Acrostic to an Album never presented ..... 213 



IN MEMORIAM. 



As once, oh, truest friend, I placed a tiny rose, 
Blushing and sweet, upon thy silent breast. 

So I this tribute bring at thy life's close, 
Hoping that thou wilt see it with the rest, 
And find it fair, though very frail, at best. 

God had so many gifted souls, alas ! could He 
Not leave me one, — almost my only one? 

For I shall miss thy face; nor ever hope to see 
Thy like again till life and work are done, 
Till all is ended and my rest begun. 

We covered all thy casket with fair flowers, 
Trying, O Death ! to hide thy ghastliness ; 

Strewed them beneath thy bier that bitter hour, 
Thinking our tenderness to thus express, 
Striving, in vain, to make our loss the less. 

(vii) 



viii IN MEJIORIAM. 

Only a fragrant bud to place upon thy stone, — • 

Thy master-hand hath reared the wondrous imagery 
Thy busy brain hath wrought, until it now has grown 

Into a stately monument for thy bright memory. 

Far more imperishing than any shaft may bs, 
That, crumbling, stands in marble cities of the dead, 

Thy marvelous structure grandly looms aloft 
In everlasting light, and whitely gleams instead, 

Where loving memories, shadow-like and soft, 

Play o'er it in the ''Greenwood" of the soul — -waft 
With fragrance of past kisses, fresher, purer praise, 

Later homage to thy transfigured soul. 
So mayst thou, in thy new far-off and hidden ways, 

Be kept in mind of those that are not whole. 

Lean somewhat from thy place of high control, 
For we have need of thee — adviser, counselor, 

And dear, familiar friend ! Oh, vanished years 
Of sweet companionship ! Oh, days of yore ! 

Oh, tender heart ! that never turned from tears, 

Coldly unheeding: how this thought endears 
Thee to the souls that stand alone and dumb ! 

Even thy mantle was not left behind 
To comfort those who, desolate and numb, 



IN ME MORI AM. ix 

Do watch thy upward flight, the light to find, 
Leaving thy cross, upon thy brow to bind 
The blessed crown of righteous deeds and faithful 
words 
(For by their works shall they each one be known; 
Who are, in truth, the just, and who the Lord's; 
We know that grapes are not of thistles born, 
And never gathered was a fig of thorn). 
Dear friend, we shall retain thee in remembrance sweet, 
And though in earthly paths we never more shall meet, 
With tender, old-time greeting we shall stand 
Together yet, in friendship's better land. 

Juliette E. Prescott. 
Ottawa, III, 



MEMOIR 



OF 



OLIVER CROMWELL GRAY. 



The subject of this memoir, Oliver Cromwell 
Gray, first saw the light, on Market Street, Steu- 
benville, Ohio, January ist, 1821. He descended 
fi-om an old English family of the same name, of 
which also Thomas Gray, poet, and author of the 
*' Elegy in a Country Churchyard," was a branch. 
The house in which he was born is still standing 
on the principal thoroughfare of that thriving little 
city. He inherited from his parents only a sound 
mind in a sound body. If not the heir of fortune, 
he was well-born. Even in early childhood, he 
evinced that indomitable push and unconquerable 
ambition which alone sustained him in many of 
the difficulties which beset his pathway in later 
years. 

The parents of Mr. Gray, for many years, re- 
sided at the post village of Black Horse, Harford 
County, Maryland. Here his father was reared in 



1 2 ^ MEMOIR. 

the Episcopal Church, and ^vas joined in marriage, 
December 15th, 1796, by a clergyman of that 
denomination, to Sarah Garner. In 18 17 they 
removed to Steubenville, Ohio. David Gray, father 
of Oliver Cromwell Gray, was a man of large and 
varied information, an ardent admirer of poetry, 
and himself the author of severah small poems of 
more than ordinary merit. He was also a fluent 
and livelv conversationalist, and delis^hted in dis- 
putations upon historical, social, political, and reli- 
gious topics. He was what Lord Bacon called a 
"full man," having had a thorough knowledge of 
English literature. As a mathematician, few men 
of his day were able to cope with him in the solu- 
tion of difficult problems. Notwithstanding his tal- 
ent and intellectual culture, he was like too many of 
large endowment, not free from bondage to the in- 
toxicating cup. In common with the rest of the 
family, Oliver Cromwell of course felt keenly the 
embarrassments attendant upon the father's neglect 
of business and home, and his youthful desires 
were thus often thwarted durino- his school davs. 
As a student, he is said to have been unusually 
diligent ; he was also remarkably retiring in his 
disposition, — seldom mingling in the ordinary 
sports of youth. A schoolmate remarks of him : 
" I do not remember to have ever seen him with 
the boisterous boys on the play-ground. His 
advance in his studies was remarkably rapid. My 



MEMOIR. 



13 



recollection is, that he overtook us by the most 
unusual exertions, and always retained an excel- 
lent standing in his class, despite his numerous 
early disadvantages. He certainly possessed a 
mind remarkable for self-discipline and facility in 
the acquisition of knowledge." 

Mr. Gray owed much of his manliness of char- 
acter, even in boyhood, to one of the most solici- 
tous, affectionate, and religious of mothers, who 
allowed no obstacle to stand in the way of the 
realization of the cherished ideas of her poor, yet 
aspiring and noble boy. Indeed, his maternal 
parent was one of nature's noblewomen, who not 
only kept household " things to rights," but when 
the father, at times, became unfitted to manage his 
business affairs, she was head of the family, as well 
as mother to the little ones, and watched and cared 
for the varied interests of home long after age had 
furrowed her cheek and silvered her hair, and dis- 
ease doubled her once erect and graceful form. 
She was such tender, patient, and heroic mother 
as blesses i^^^ households, and whose life and in- 
fluence and tuition constitute the richest legacy 
that parent can bequeath to child. Through all his 
eventful life, the mother lived in the son. 

In early youth Mr. Gray was very polite and 

engaging in his manners. It is related of him, 

that, in leaving a room, he would invariably move 

backward until he had passed the door. At the 
B 



14 



MEMOIR. 



age of seven years he first doffed his cap in the 
school-room. From his first to his last lesson in 
school-life he was most diligent and untiring in 
the pursuit of knowledge, — ever preferring study to 
play. Indeed, it may be said of him, even in the 
tender years of youth, when other boys were in- 
tent only on sport, that he was laying the founda- 
tion for the ability and success that revealed them- 
selves \\\ his profession as jurist and pleader. 
Passing by the interval of his boyhood from seven 
to sixteen, we find him at the latter period a stu- 
dent at the Grove Academy, at Steubenville, under 
the tutorship of Rev. J. W. Scott. His favorite 
spot, in which to memorize his lessons and decla- 
mations, was the quiet, neighboring wood. He 
always found blessed communion with the trees, 
and to them, perhaps, his sweetest poem is conse- 
crated. 

In the year 1838 Master Gray finished his 
studies at the Grove Academy, and, on the 22d 
of October, of the same year, he began teaching 
school at the village of Knoxville, Jefferson County, 
Ohio. He was then in his eighteenth year. Dur- 
ing his first session, his scholars numbered an 
average attendance of forty-five, some of whom 
were young men and women. In a letter to a 
member of the family at home, he remarks : "I 
have had no difficulty in governing the scholars; 
they are afraid somewhat of their dignified master." 



MEMOIR. 



15 



For his services rendered he received twenty-five 
dollars per month. He next taught school in the 
village of Springfield, Jefferson County, Ohip, for 
six months, from May 6th, 1839. After closing 
his school in this village, he returned to Steuben- 
ville, and began the study of law in the office of 
Roswell Marsh. During the time he taught the 
village schools, before referred to, he saved enough 
of his earnings to attend the lectures at the Cin- 
cinnati Law College. 

In October, 1840, he left home for the Queen 
City, arriving there on the 27th of the same month. 
The students in attendance at the college organ- 
ized a legislative body, as well as a moot court, in 
both of which Mr. Gray took a prominent part. 
He writes home, of date December 13th, 1840: 
" I have made several set speeches in the legislature 
on Capital Punishment and the Tariff, and one on 
the Veto Power. Although one of the youngest 
members, I stand in the foremost ranks, and 
measure intellectual strength with the best. I have 
been put on the most important committees, and, 
though a stranger, I have run several good polls 
for Speaker, and also for Clerk. I will graduate 
with a perfect rush." This was not bravado, but a 
gush of the sanguine soul that was in him, and an 
utterance of the faith he had in his vigorous and 
conquering brain. He did graduate in the follow- 
ing March (1841), with honor. During the same 



1 6 MEMOIR. 

month he returned to Steubenville, and read law 
with his old preceptor, Roswell Marsh. He was 
admitted to the bar the same year, at Cleveland, 
Ohio, and continued in the practice of the law until 
war was declared between the United States and 
Mexico. At this time Mr. Gray was first lieu- 
tenant of the Jefferson Grays, of Steubenville, Ohio, 
and left with that organization for the seat of war. 
On board of the steamer Wisconsin, which con- 
veyed the Grays to Camp Washington, at Cincinnati, 
the rendezvous of the Ohio State forces, he met 
Rev. Henry B. Bascom, the celebrated pulpit orator 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He thus 
briefly refers to the personal appearance of Mr. Bas- 
com, at that time in the height of his popularity : 
" Bascom is a splendid-looking man, with a set 
mouth, keen eye, and commanding chin. He would 
make a good general." During the continuance 
of the Mexican war he served as adjutant of 
the Third Ohio Regiment, commanded by Colonel 
Samuel R. Curtis, afterward governor of Iowa, 
and during the late rebellion major-general of 
volunteers in the Union army. The lieutenant- 
colonel of the regiment was Colonel George W. 
McCook, recently the Democratic candidate for 
governor of Ohio. 

We take the following quotation from a letter to 
a member of the family, written from Matamoras, 
of date October 22d, 1846: "This is a marked 



iUEAlOIR. I y 

period in the history of my life. Yesterday, eight 
years ago, I first left home for the broad world. 
You recollect our trip then, by way of Richmond 
to Knoxville. To-day, eight years ago, I seated 
myself as a petty tyrant among the boys and girls 
in a village school-house. How many changes in 
those eight years, until now, from a pedagogue, 
I play adjutant in the * big wars', three thousand 
miles from home ! It is indeed passing strange !" 
Writing from Monterey, of date March 17th, 1847, 
to the same person, he says: " How strange are hu- 
man fortunes ! One year ago to-day I was at your 
wedding. Now I am writing you a letter on an 
old trunk from the celebrated Black Fort. But so 
we go ; all must take things as Destiny shares 
them out." 

On the 4th of. July, 1847, Mr. Gray returned 
to his home in Steubenville, Ohio, and continued 
to reside there until March, 1849, when, in com- 
pany with some fifty others, he started for the 
land of El Dorado. He left some notes of his 
arduous overland journey, but they are so brief as 
to be of little value to the reader, and for that rea- 
son we have deemed it unadvisable to- reproduce 
them here." Arriving in California, September, 
1849, he began mining on Big Bear River. In a 
letter from the mines, he remarks : *' The state of 
law and order here is good. Every man is al- 
lowed fifteen feet along the stream. No such thing 
B* 2 



1 8 MEMOIR. 

as stealing is known. A miner may store his ' traps' 
with perfect security. By * storing', I mean he may 
set his things by a tree or rock and go back weeks 
afterward, and find them all safe. This state of 
affairs is a novelty in the social progress. It proves 
that when men can realize fortunes readily there 
is no motive for crime." Not having met with the 
success he anticipated, he joined a company in an 
effort to change the course of the Yuba River. 
After several months of almost incessant toil, their 
labors giving no promise of fruition, they very re- 
luctantly abandoned the great scheme. The labor 
expended in the fruitless effort to change the course 
of the river was so severe, and the exposure so con- 
tinued, that his strength gave way under them, and 
thus he became the victim of a prolonged attack of 
typhoid fever. Shortly after his recovery (having 
spent almost a year in the mines with but little 
financial success), he went to San Francisco, and 
became chief clerk and banker for Mr. C. A. Smith, 
at that time the largest ship broker in the city. 
Mr. Gray continued in his employ until the spring 
of 185 I, when he returned home by steamer, via 
the Isthmus of Darien, Havana, and New York 
City. 

On the 25th of ^lay, 185 i, Mr. Gray was married 
at Steubenville, Ohio, to Miss Elizabeth Virginia 
Reddick, Rev. J. H. Hamilton, of the Methodist 
Protestant Church, performing the marriage cere- 



MEMOIR. 19 

mony. In the same year he was appointed briga- 
dier-general of the mihtia of the district, but only 
served a brief time in this capacity, owing to his re- 
moval to Mansfield, Ohio. Here he engaged in 
the practice of his profession in partnership with 
Hon. Thomas H. Ford, afterward lieutenant-gover- 
nor of Ohio. He remained at Mansfield until the 
spring of 1853, when he removed to Ottawa, La 
Salle County, Illinois, and again resumed the 
practice of the law. Soon after his arrival here, 
he entered into a partnership with Washington 
Bushnell, Esq. On the 9th of October, 1857, his 
wife, whose health had been delicate for several 
years, died, childless. 

In 1858 Mr. Gray took an active part in the 
memorable senatorial contest between Lincoln and 
Douglas, in which the latter was the successful 
candidate, the legislature chosen that year having 
had a considerable Democratic majority. During 
the canvass, Mr.. Gray made several eloquent ad- 
dresses in behalf of his distinguished friend, Mr. 
Lincoln, and wrote some of the speeches delivered 
by the latter. (And here it will not, perhaps, be out 
of place to say that, in the faces of the two men, 
both sleeping now in Illinois graves, there are 
striking resemblances.) 

On the 25th of May, i860, Mr. Gray was united 
in marriage with Miss Mary C. Sutphen (youngest 
daughter of Charles H. Sutphen, Esq., of Earlville, 



20 ^ MEMOIR. 

Illinois), Rev. T. A. Benedict, pastor of Christ 
Church, Ottawa, solemnizing the nuptials. 

In the fall of i860, Mr. Gray was an earnest ad- 
vocate of the election of Abraham Lincoln to the 
Presidency, and delivered a number of speeches 
in his behalf in several counties in the northern 
part of Illinois. In this intensely exciting cam- 
paign, upon the issue of which the fate of the nation 
seemed to hang, he threw himself with all the zeal 
and eloquence and strength of his earnest nature 
and his powerful intellect. 

At the outbreak of the rebellion, he made elo- 
quent and successful appeals to the people to organ- 
ize in defense of the Union. He addressed a large 
meeting in Ottawa on the famous Sunday of Fort 
Sumter memory, and at once began the recruiting 
of men for active service. He was a prompt man. 
What his hand found to do, he did with his might. 
He did not plan, and leave it to others to execute, 
but he was one of the few men who seemed able 
to do both. Almost with the same breath he would 
kindle patriotic fires in the souls of men, and en- 
list them in the service of their imperiled countr}^ 

In 1868 he was nominated for Congress by the 
Democratic Convention of the Sixth District of 
Illinois, although the nomination was entirely un- 
sought by him. His opponent, Hon. B. C Cook, 
was elected, but by a greatly reduced majority, 
compared to his predecessor, elected in 1866. 



MEMOIR, 21 

In 1 86 1 Mr. Gray formed a law partnership 
with Hon. W. Bushnell (now Attorney-General of 
Illinois) and Julius Avery (since deceased)-, under 
the firm name of Gray, Avery & Bushnell. This 
partnership continued until 1865, when Mr. Gray 
retired from the firm. He continued to be actively 
engaged in the practice of his profession until the 
fall of 1870, when declining health compelled him 
to relinquish his labors. During the winter he 
was for a time confined to his bed, and at one 
period so wasted as to give his friends the most 
serious alarm in regard to his condition. He ral- 
lied, however, and in the spring of 187 1 showed 
wonderful recuperation ; but this did not continue, 
for early in July his symptoms again became 
alarming. His family physician, giving way to 
Mr. Gray's expressed opinion that a sojourn at 
Mackinac, Michigan, would prove highly benefi- 
cial, consented to accompany him to that favorite 
summer resort. The climate proved altogether 
too cool, and he was compelled to return home. 
He went home to die. No change of place nor 
climate could longer keep death at bay. The 
once strong, resolute, and active man began to 
tremble and topple to his fall. He felt that no 
human power could save him. During his illness 
he was baptized by Rev. W. W. Estabrook, of 
Christ Church, Ottawa. Little by little he gave 
way before the destroyer. It was a sad sight to 



22 MEMOIR. 

see the light go out of his face, the lustre out of 
his eyes, the spring out of his limbs, the eloquence 
out of his tongue, — to see the strong man brought 
low. But he accepted the solemn providence 
calmly and patiently. He did not fear nor shrink 
in Death's presence. He said little, but seemed to 
see the way open to his ftet in the last journey. 
And on the evening of the 31st of July, 1871, his 
spirit passed peacefully over into the Better Land. 

In stature, Mr. Gray was five feet nine inches. 
He stooped slightly in the shoulders, thus deceiv- 
ing one as to his actual height. He was slender, 
but solidly and perfectly built. His complexion 
was florid, — one of the indications of his sanguine 
temperament. His hair was dark-brown, curly, 
and of strong growth. His eyes were large, quick, 
and full of life, and of that peculiar shade — bluislt^ 
gray — that at times made one think them dark- 
blue. In expression they ever wore the ingenu- 
ousness of childhood. 

We have already said that Mr. Gray chose the 
law as a profession. And as a lawyer we will now 
speak of him briefly. He was not a pettifogger. 
Nor did he degrade his professon into a mere 
trade, out of which to grind a living or accumulate 
wealth. The law meant other than this to him. 
He honored the law. To him it had a great 
science, which he studied with the zeal and passion 
that the astronomer studies he science of the stars, 



MEMOIR. 



23 



or the metaphysician the science of the mind. He 
did not simply learn the law and recite it before 
the judge and jury, but he studied and penetrated 
it in its sources, until he saw the reason of it, and 
so was able to use it, not as an arbitrary, but as an 
intelligent, power. Had he been unable to do this, 
he would not have been a lawyer. It was natural 
to him to take his soul into his work. He could 
do nothing in a mechanical way. He must do 
understandingly or not at all. 

That we have rightly interpreted him, all will 
witness who have seen him before a jury, unravel- 
ing some complicate case, or pleading, as if he 
were a brother, for the Life of a trembling client. 
In the one case he showed not only a marvelous 
acquaintance with the law, but an intelligent un- 
derstanding of it, and would reason out into sym- 
metrical and logical argument with the precision 
and coolness of an Aristotle ; while in the other 
he would exhibit the pathos of a woman and set 
a jury aflame with the heat and unction of appeal. 

The reader will be ready to infer, from what we 
have said, that Mr. Gray was more than the mere 
pleader. In the law it is often as in medicine. 
Many doctors are spoken of as *' good practi- 
tioners," who know but little of the science of 
medicine. And so many lawyers pass for good 
pleaders in the courts, who have never grappled 
the law in its principles. But neither such physi- 



24 



MEMOIR. 



cians, nor such la^^yers, are equal to intricate and 
difficult questions, in the sick-room or in the 
court They only know what has been made 
certain by experiment. They are at their wit's 
end if some new disease reveal itself, or the case 
in court exhibit some original or unique phase. 

To this class of lawvers ]\Ir. Grav did not belonsf. 
He struck through to the bottom.* He was a 
jurist as well as a pleader. Xo matter what new 
phase a case would take, what new difficulty a 
trial would assume, or into what intricacies it 
might become involved, he was equal to it, and 
found, if not in the written, then in the unwritten law 
of reason, or universal common sense, a solution of 
the problem. Such are the great lawyers. They 
never fail. Complicate the case, and they increase 
in vision. Weave it into the web of all difficulty, 
and their fingers grow nimbler to untie the knot. 
Remove it beyond the pale of the books, — of 
Justinian or Blackstone, — and they will recite, in 
answer, from the law of Nature, Reason. God. Few 
take this height, and of the few, Mr. Gra}- ^^"as 
one. 

With the books he was entirely conversant. He 
could recite the law as if he had spent his life to do 
nothing else. He knew when to cite authority. 
He never embarrassed an arcrument bv burdeninfj 
it with irrelevant citations. He only called in the 
authority of the law when his argument naturally 



MEMOIR. 



25 



received that authority. He had keen discrimina- 
tion. He had great learning ; had pastured in all 
fields of knowledge. He had a woman's heart and 
tender sympathies, an indomitable will, and endless 
industry. And all these were given to the client 
whose cause he espoused. 

And here we cite the testimony that his brethren 
of the bar, who knew him well, have borne of him. 
The first is from his preceptor, now venerable with 
old age, Roswell Marsh, Esq., of Steubenville, Ohio. 
In a letter to Hon. W. Bushnell, Attorney-General 
of Illinois, and for several years a partner of Mr. 
Gray, bearing date August loth, 1871, Mr. Marsh 
writes : 

" I have seen with great regret the intelligence 
of the death of Oliver C. Gray, Esq. Mr. Gray 
was a native of this town, and studied law in my 
office. He was a diligent student, had a fine intel- 
lect, and a strong desire for knowledge of all kinds. 
In the Mexican war he was in the army as adju- 
tant of an Ohio regiment. The late General Sam- 
uel R. Curtis was the colonel, and George W. 
McCook, now candidate for governor of Ohio, was 
lieutenant-colonel. He had, and no doubt de- 
served, the ■ reputation of being a most accom- 
plished staff officer. I have watched the course of 
Mr. Gray with much interest, because, to my mind, 
his youth gave promise of the man. I sympathize 

with my brethren of the bar in the great loss the 
C 



26 MEMOIR. 

profession has sustained. At seventy-eight years 
of age, my shattered nerves and broken voice have 
compelled me to relinquish the labors of the pro- 
fession, whilst younger men are withdrawing by 
death from the scene." 

Tuesday morning, August ist, 1 87 1, the day 
following the demise of Mr. Gray, the announce- 
ment of his death was made in the Circuit Court 
at Ottawa. There was a large attendance of the 
bar as well as many prominent citizens. Imme- 
diately after Judge Leland had taken his seat 
upon the bench, the Hon. Washington Bushnell 
addressed the court as follows : 

If the court please : It has fallen to my sad lot within 
the last few months to announce to this court the 
death of Julius Avery, a member of this bar, who for 
long years was a partner of mine ; as well as the death 
of William C. Pearson, a former student of ours, who 
for long years was in our office ; the death of both of 
whom we mourn. It now becomes my solemn duty to 
announce to your Honor, and to this bar, the death of 
Oliver C. Gray. For over fourteen years myself and 
Mr. Gray were partners in the practice of the law. For 
these fourteen years I have to say simply that there was 
not a word of unkindness spoken between us. 

I don't believe that any unkind feeling ever existed 
between Mr. Gray, Mr. Avery, and myself during the 
time we were partners together. 

Mr. Gray was an active practitioner of the law. He 
was a man of energy, always at his post of duty. His 



MEMOIR. 



27 



countenance was familiar to us and to tlie community 
and to all those who were in the habit of assembling in 
this court-room. He will be missed by your Honor ; 
he will be missed and deplored by the members of the 
bar, and by all parties litigant in this court. As a 
clear-headed lawyer, as a social and agreeable intellect- 
ual companion, it may be possible to supply his place, 
but it will be very difficult indeed to do so. 

I need not say that Mr. Gray was a remarkable man. 
Remarkable in the brilliancy of his conversational 
powers ; remarkable as an intellectual man ; remark- 
able as a lawyer in all the departments of the profession. 
He had perhaps equals in all departments of the law, 
but if he had superiors, they were indeed very few, 
either here or elsewhere. Kind in his practice, true in 
all his professional engagements, like all the rest of us 
in the moment of heat, in the moment of excitement, 
he may possibly have sometimes erred ; but if he did, 
he was always prompt, when the momentary excite- 
ment had passed away, to make full and complete 
amends for all that he had done that could be said to 
be unjust. For this Mr. Gray was remarkable. "To 
err is human ; to forgive, divine. ' ' 

Mr. Gray was a man whose intellect was not con- 
fined within the practice of the law. His mind was 
cultivated in all the various fields of intellect. He was 
at home in the law, at home in mental philosophy, 
at home in the various languages, — they were all fa- 
miliar to him. I know that many of us, indeed the most 
of us, went to Mr. Gray to consult him as a student 
does to Webster's Dictionary. In all branches of 



28 MEMOIR. 

literature his mind was highly cultivated ; his memory 
was seldom, if ever, at fault. We have learned many 
lessons from him. He is gone ! We shall go to him, 
but he will not return to us ! By the decree of an un- 
alterable natural law he passed away. We who have 
seen him here shall see him no more. Mr. Gray was 
a man whose intellect was firm, grasping, and unyield- 
ing. When he met a man in legal controversy he met 
him as upon the field of battle. It was a strife the very 
moment he entered this court-room. The blade of the 
intellect was ever keen and sharp ; his mind was grasp- 
ing, his determination endless; he would struggle and 
struggle when other members of the bar would appar- 
ently be discouraged; he fought nobly with his antag- 
onist. Never will he again ! He has had many a stern 
conflict here; he has met many a shrewd, keen, and re- 
lentless advocate in this room. He has finally met an 
adversary stronger and more powerful than he had ever 
met before. The grasp of his intellect and his physical 
nerve have had to yield to a power sujDerior to his own. 
The word was given, Mr. Gray yielded; after victories, 
he is no longer a victor; Death has become his victor. 
Peace to his ashes. Long may his memory live; long 
may the work of his intellect survive; and may it be 
said of us, as it will be said of Gray, ''He was an orna- 
ment to society and an ornament to his profession!" 
Ever industrious, ever hard working, ever seeking to 
develop and aid the members of the legal profession, 
he was willing to assist even the youngest members of 
the bar, to cheer them, to encourage them, and to give 
them freely information which had accrued to him 



MEMOIR. 



29 



from long years of labor and study. I do not think 
that any one ever approached Oliver C. Gray and 
asked him for assistance, or information, or advice, but 
that he gave it most cheerfully and gladly, except when it 
would tend to reveal some of the features of his own case. 
I say he was kind, — particularly so was he to the 
younger members of the bar; and while he may have 
appeared exacting when practicing with the older 
members of the bar, his bearing towards the younger 
members was always kind, indulgent, and forbearing. 

Judge Leland in reply spoke as follows : 

Our deceased brother, Mr. Gray, was perhaps one of 
the most remarkable men that ever practiced' at this or 
any other bar. He possessed that rare combination of 
talents that we seldom find united in the same person. 
To a very thorough knowledge of all the details of the 
legal profession, thorough knowledge of special plead- 
ing, and all such matters, he united a poetic tempera- 
ment and powers of imagination of the most remarkable 
kind; and we may say of him, with justice, that '^we 
ne'er shall look upon his like again." 

I have been acquainted with the deceased for many 
years, and I have ever found him to be all that has been 
so feelingly said of him by the learned counsel who has 
announced his death. He was certainly a most genial 
companion, instructive, thoroughly versed, not only in 
the subjects of the law, but also in all the range of 
philosophy and poetry and love for the fine arts. It 
is very seldom that these qualities are united in the 



30 



MEMOIR. 



same man. Where a man excels in one of them he is 
apt to be deficient in others. Mr. Gray was a remark- 
able man in these respects. 

Immediately after the adjournment of the Circuit 
Court, a meeting of the bar of Ottawa was held, 
and a committee on resolutions, expressive of the 
feelings of its members, was appointed, and in- 
structed to report at a future meeting. 

An adjourned meeting was held Wednesday 
morning, August 2d. The Committee on Resolu- 
tions reported, among others, the following : 

Resolved, That in our late brother we recognize 
the highest elements of the counselor and of the advo- 
cate. That we recognize in him an intellectual en- 
dowment which his own assiduity converted into a 
profound scholarship, not only of law, but of science 
and philosophy, and not only of these, but of nature's 
histories, and to all these was added the gift of poetry. 

Hon. T. L. Dickey then addressed the meeting 
as follows. 

AVe come together to prepare for tie burial of 
no ordinary man. Oliver C. Gray has been actively 
engaged for sixteen years before his death in the prac- 
tice of law at this bar. Most of us have known him 
well, and have been brought in close connection with 
him, not only as associates with him in cases which he 
tried, but as adversaries in professional strife. For 
clear discrimination, for ready perception, for incisive 



MEMOJK. 



31 



logic, for effectual denunciation, when his case called 
for it, for the irresistible power of ridicule, when it 
became necessary, and for all the varied talents that 
constitute a successful lawyer, Oliver C. Gray was dis- 
tinguished far above the ordinary standard of profes- 
sional ability. 

For many of the early years of his professional life 
here I knew him only in court, and knew nothing of 
him save as he was manifested in his intellectual efforts 
at the bar; and I confess that my impression of his 
character was that while he was intellectual, — lucidly so, 
— bright, and thoroughly versed in his profession, that 
he was a man, in a measure, without imagination and 
without sentiment. Later in life I came to know him 
better. I came to know him more as an associate and 
companion ; and I was much surprised to find that I 
had misconceived his character, that I had seen but 
one bright phase of it ; and I first discovered from the 
reading of some beautiful lines which he had composed, 
called the " Sea Coral's Dream," that he was a man of 
brilliant imagination, and of inimitable taste and of 
profound research in literature ; and when I read that 
little poem entitled ^'The Worship of the Woods," I 
discovered that he was a man of deep sympathy and 
poetic thought, and that he was capable of sentiments 
of the most -lofty, and at the same time of the most re- 
fined, character. The thought of that poem is one that 
will never be forgotten by me. The suggestion is made 
there that in the works of nature we are brought to 
appreciate the existence of God ; the great Creator is 
brought to our minds by the manifestation of the 



32 MEMOIR. 

grandeur of nature. He suggests that when we stand 
upon the border of the broad ocean and see the deep 
waves rolling, we are profoundly impressed that they 
are the work of God ; but that poem suggests that it 
presents the Deitv away in the distance and gives us 
the idea of his grandeur, but it is far off. So, he says, 
when we come upon the broad prairies of the North- 
west, their immensity and their grandeur present to us 
ver}" forcibly the idea of existence, action, and con- 
trolling presence in this world of a great Creator, — of 
Deity, with all his grandeur and infinite powers, — but 
they still present to us the idea of a God away off in 
the distance. But when we come into the woods 
where the little leaflets and the flowers are at our feet, 
it makes us feel that God is near to us, and the " wor- 
ship of the woods' ' has more to do with the heart, with 
the sympathies, and the affections than those thoughts 
suggested by the broad ocean and the grand prairie. 
It struck me as one of the most beautiful, sound, senti- 
mental thoughts that I have ev-er found in the writings 
of any poet in the world. I present this merely as an 
illustration. As has been justly said of him, he com- 
bined, perhaps, a greater variety of the faculties of the 
mind than is often found in one man. He was the 
close reasoner, he was the diligent student, with fine 
taste and a degree of culture that few of us had any 
appreciation of until we had known him longer. 

Frank J. Crawford, Esq., spoke as follows : 

Mr. Chairman, — In rising to say a few words before 
the vote is taken upon these resolutions, I hope I may 



MEMOIR. 



33 



not be open to the charge of intrusion upon what is per- 
haps the prerogative of older members of the bar, to 
speak on occasions of this kind ; believing as I do that 
the younger men should also esteem it a right and an 
honor to offer a tribute of respect to the memory of our 
departed friend and brother, Oliver C. Gray. Fifteen 
years ago I was here, a young man, without acquaint- 
ances, without means, and without a profession. Un- 
decided what course in life to adopt, I called upon Mr. 
Gray for advice. He received me kindly, gave me 
words of encouragement, and told me I could by dili- 
gent industry and study become a successful lawyer, — 
furnished me a list of text-books which he recom- 
mended as a proper course of study, and assured me 
that if I would pursue that course faithfully, his word 
for it I would not fail. A few years afterwards he as- 
sisted me when I tried my first case in court. Always 
when I have gone to Mr. Gray for the solution of some 
legal problem, which to me was difficult, he heard me 
patiently, and cheerfully gave me the benefit of his 
great learning. I have frequently met him as an antag- 
onist in court, but he invariably treated me with con- 
sideration and respect, and I have no complaint to 
make of his ever having made me the target of the 
scathing invective which he could, if necessary, employ. 
I believe my experience in this respect is identical sub- 
stantially with that of his juniors at the bar generally. 
We hold the sentiment in common that Mr. Gray was 
kind and considerate in his treatment of the young men 
of the profession. He watched our progress with solici- 
tude, and when we gave promise of success it filled him 

3 



34 



MEMOIR. 



with enthusiastic delight. We admired his genius, and 
were ever proud of his triumphs and of the honorable 
distinction he achieved at the bar. He inspired in us 
an admiration for the science of the law, for he had a 
profound admiration for it himself; he commended to 
us the wisdom of the sages of the law, taking for his 
own models no less men than ^Mansfield and Marshall. 
He used to charm us no less by his power in unfolding 
the mysteries of the law and in perceiving and mastering 
its intricacies, than by his artistic skill in the preparation 
and management of his cases. He was a brilliant and 
impressive speaker. The precedents to be found on 
the files of our courts, prepared by him, are a monument 
of his ability as a pleader. In addition to his ability 
and skill, he possessed what is an important condition 
of success, industry and strict attention to his profes- 
sional duties. He was an earnest and zealous worker, 
and he took great pride in the progress and develop- 
ment of jurisprudence in our State ; yet his love for the 
established principles and forms of the common law 
would not allow him to sanction the inconsiderate in- 
novations which in some instances have found a place 
in our statute books. 'We had hoped his health in later 
years would have permitted him to prepare a treatise 
on some leading branch of the law, which would doubt- 
less have been an honor to his intellect and to the pro- 
fession ; but, alas I human hopes are uncertain. **' Death 
loves a shining mark, "•and in taking Mr. Gray from 
us, one of the brightest lights we may ever expect to see 
has been removed. The form and face of our friend, so 
long familiar to us within the walls of this courtroom. 



MEMOIR. 



35 



have passed away, to be seen here no more forever. 
While we cast the mantle of charity upon his faults, let 
us strive to emulate his virtues, and cherish in our hearts 
a kind and respectful remembrance of Oliver C. Gray. 

Mr. George W. Stipp said : 

Mr. Chairman, — The memory of Oliver C. Gray 
needs not that I should bear my testimony in his 
praise. I was acquainted with him from almost the 
outset of his professional career. We were both young, 
and both laboring for success in the same profession. 
He was always kind, aiid always ready to assist me in 
every time of need. I speak now, not so much hoping 
to add anything to the high honor which is due to his 
memory, as to acknowledge my gratitude for the many 
favors I have received at his hands. I always found 
him a man of high honor and true friendship. He 
was a man of a high order of talent; he was learned in 
his profession, and had a versatility of genius which 
insures success in all branches of the administration of 
justice. It was my good fortune to have his assistance 
in the trial of some of the most important cases ever 
intrusted to my care, and to be associated with him in 
the trial of some of his own. I found him thoroughly 
furnished with the requisite knowledge, untiring in 
labor, ready of invention, fertile in expedients, and 
brilliantly eloquent in argument. Beyond the precinct 
of the law he was a man of wide information. Although 
the Law was his first love, and he worshiped her with 
an ardor that left her no room for jealousy, yet he was 
well acquainted with the other sciences, and with 



36 MEMOIR. 

general literature. He was a fine scholar, and the 
poems he has left us show that had he devoted himself 
to the Muses as he did to his profession, he would have 
had few if any superiors as a poet, as he had few if any 
superiors as a lawyer. He was well acquainted with 
military science and history, and served his country 
with honor in the Mexican war. He was a man of warm 
and generous heart, actuated by the noblest impulses 
of human nature. While he enjoyed the rich regards 
of his professional labors, he was ever mindful of the 
poor and needy, — he gave freely and abundantly. 

He commenced his career in poverty and among 
strangers : he achieved fortune and fame ; and one of 
his highest honors is, that these results are due to his 
own talents and his own labor. His courtesy to his 
brethren of the bar, and especially his kindness to the 
younger members, are worthy of imitation. Death 
closed his court in the full tide of life. He had the 
happiness to know no decline. While we admire his 
talents and revere his memory, let us imitate his virtues. 
He has gone from among us. A star has fallen from 
our legal galaxy, and left us in the darkness of sorrow. 
While we are mourning behind him, if his own faith is 
true, as I believe it is, his friends who have gone before 
him are rejoicing that he has joined them in that land 
where death and parting are no more. 

The final- proceedings in the Circuit Court were 
had Monday, August 14th. The resolutions pre- 
viously adopted at a meeting of the Ottawa bar 
were presented by Judge J. C. Champlin, who said : 



MEMOIR. 



37 



We are all deeply sensible that, in the demise of Oliver 
C. Gray, this community, as well as this bar, have sus- 
tained a loss of intellectual wealth, hard, indeed, and 
not soon to be replaced. Born fifty years ago, of 
an honorable lineage, his only ancestral bequest was 
a vigorous constitution and a splendid intellect. But 
this heritage he knew was more precious than gold ; 
for at its command gold comes, bound in chains, a 
prisoner at its master's feet ; yet that treasure, he knew, 
was a worthless tender for the purchase of intellectual 
fortune. It was this which led him at the outset of his 
career to choose one of the three professions whose 
monuments mark the highest altitude of intellectual 
greatness. He knew that it had required a period of 
more than twenty centuries to produce the nine great 
captains who had elevated the standard of the military 
art to its perfect summit. Casting his eyes upon the 
noble profession of the law, they were fastened upon 
Mansfield, who had enlarged its circumference, upon 
Denman, Trochet, Marshall, Webster, who he knew 
had filled it. Looking at the line of illustrious advo- 
cates who have decorated it by the splendor of their 
forensic abilities, — Wirt, AVilliams, Cady, and after- 
wards, perhaps greater than them all, Arrington, — he 
saw that they had left behind them a standard hard to 
reach, but priceless, because showing how to reach it. 
At the outset, therefore, he determined to climb, as 
high as he might, the pyramid of judicial greatness. 
The source of means he found at his command, upon 
which to base this noble undertaking, was a mind, 

tenacious as steel, and tempered, first by nature and 
D 



38 MEMOIR. 

afterwards by art, to the incisive energy and the glit- 
tering sheen of the Damascus blade. But his intellect- 
ual armory was not composed of steel alone. His 
imagination, rich as burnished gold, sparkled also 
with the rarest gems that princes of the mind do wear. 
It was these endowments, so rare among men, that 
enabled Oliver Cromwell Gray to comprehend the 
full altitude of intellectual greatness, to gaze upon it 
firmly, and to commence with a courage and energy 
seldom equaled in the times in which he lived, the 
ascent towards its summit. He knew the intellectual 
staffs by which the great generals, the great jurists, the 
great statesmen, had been enabled to reach it. Reason, 
the body of them all, the rarest and most priceless of 
God's endowments, must, he knew, be ceaselessly fed 
by the imagination ; must be put into activity by 
courage ; must be lighted by an unerring cattp-d'' ail ; 
must perform its evolutions by means of quick percep- 
tions, and be sustained by a fortitude and endurance 
unconquerable. And he knew, also, that each of these 
great staffs of the mind must be educated — first sepa- 
rately, and then to work together in harmony. He knew 
that a poet at the head of an army, a merchant prince 
in the seat of Marshall, would not be in their proper 
places. But still he knew that he who possesses them 
all, and has educated them all, is fit for any place ; 
that he who possesses the greatest number of these in- 
tellectual staffs in their greatest force, and in their most 
perfect education, is the great man among men. 

This pyramid of intellectual greatness — reason for 
Its base, its every side lighted by the imagination — he 



MEMOIR, 



39 



well knew the millions pass and see it not. Of the few 
who do see and comprehend it in its full altitude and 
majesty, a select corps only possesses courage and force 
sufficient to attempt its ascent. He whose obsequies 
we are celebrating was of that corps. I do invite you, 
therefore, his brothers and pupils, to examine with me 
the means and the measure of his success. Look, I 
pray you, upon the structure of this man's mind. His 
reason, strong as a beam of oak, and as solid, was en- 
dued by his imagination with a soul, and wrought by it 
into forms of wondrous beauty. Constantly fed from 
that life-giving source, it was ever ready for effective 
action. His perception penetrated like a flash the 
souls of his adversaries. His courage was unconquer- 
able. It was always under the control of a head per- 
fectly cool, of a sang-fi'oid rarely found in thee' ass of 
even the most distinguished advocates. And finally, 
his imagination, affluent far beyond that of other men 
of the intellectual corps to which he belonged, was 
nurtured, cherished, educated, with exquisite skill. 
These great qualities he had for the long period of 
more than twenty years thoroughly disciplined to work 
in harmony together. He recruited his intellectual 
forces by a conscription, diligent, discriminating, and 
unceasing, of every domain where knowledge had a 
known abode. When, therefore, the day of trial 
came, the mental forces which he brought into line 
were veteran soldiers who had long marched under his 
command, and each prepared to execute with collective 
skill and energy the tactical movements destined to 
assure the victory. These were the reasons why we all 



40 MEMOIR. 

then gathered around him and listened and saw, with 
ever-increasing admiration, the wondrous tactical skill 
with which his forensic evolutions were prepared. 
Among the names of his illustrious departed peers, 
about to be mentioned, it may be possible to find his 
superior in strategic knowledge and in the fer^-id glow 
of eloquence which appeals to the heart and passions. 
From the same list it may be possible to select his 
equals in rapidity of perception, in tenacity, and in 
inherent courage. But in educated courage, endowed 
with eyes quick to see, and, therefore, never degen- 
erating into obstinacy, — always his servant, — never his 
master; in \^\^ sang-froid 2iTvA cool head that enabled 
him to bring into action all his intellectual forces, each 
in its appropriate place and perfectly disciplined; in 
the ease, quickness, and grace with which he could 
manage their evolutions, I have seen his equal — never. 
It was these qualities and attainments that endowed 
him with the tactical skill, the same in the advocate's 
as the soldier's art, of always being able to put his 
adversary on the defensive. He knew that the impul- 
sion of attack against the inertia of resistance was a 
mental as well as a material force which only great cap- 
tains or able advocates could appreciate, or appreciating, 
skillfully use. A feint against some part of his adver- 
sary's case where he did not propose to make his prin- 
cipal attack quickly changed to another as soon as he 
had secured his opponent's attention to the first, while 
he held the weight of his forces to hurl, at exactly the 
projjer moment, upon the vulnerable point which he 
had proposed from the first to make the principal point 



MEMOIR. 



41 



of assault, is a system of tactics learned from the great 
masters of the military art, and applied by Oliver C. 
Gray to the practice of his own with a skill and success 
which accounts for his long succession of splendid vic- 
tories, and explains the ease and grace with which he 
achieved them. Reason, thus reinforced and sustained, 
was assured of a triumph wherever triumph was possible. 
The character of the great advocate was embellished 
by the singularly varied and graceful accomplishments 
of the man. Artistic beauty, whether of material or 
of thought, sprang from the hours of his recreation, 
and w^e and nature remain his debtor for the graceful 
habiliments in which he has presented them. His 
imagination, cultivated simply as a feeder to his reason- 
ing powers and as a door for the escape of the emotions 
of his heart, showed the wide expanse and the profound 
depth he explored in his "Worship of the Wood," to 
find the source from which all that is divine in man 
had sprung; and his "Sea Coral's Dream" was the 
herald of his approach, ever upward, to the realm 
where Dante and Milton will hasten to welcome him 
as their well-loved neophyte, to become, perhaps, their 
honored peer. Ever upward ! His manly form and 
graceful mien we shall see no more. He has ascended 
to meet his friends, whose voices, like his own, have 
resounded through these halls, — Wallace, Avery, Arring- 
ton, while Spring and Butterfield, Baker, Hoes, and 
Purple, with whom they have been conversing, tender 
also their greetings, and, opening their ranks, receive 
him as their peer. In this noble company, in a region 
where time, opportunity, and space are infinite, he 
D* 4* 



42 



MEMOIR. 



will complete the ascent, so worthily commenced be- 
fore he departed from these halls forever. 

Brave, skillful antagonist ! powerful^ yet genial and 
graceful associate ! great reasoner, by the light of 
whose intelligence judicial wisdom evolved its judg- 
ments ! honored citizen, generous friend, illustrious 
advocate, — we salute, and bid thee farewell ! 

Judge Leland, in reply, spoke as follows: 

Again the court is requested to place upon its records 
the tribute of respect usual upon the death of one of 
our bar. 

Alas ! how often of late have we been called upon to 
lament the loss of one of our number ! — Walker, Brower, 
Avery, Pearson. How short a time it is since they 
were all with us ! And now the grass is growing over 
Gray. And his brethren of the bar have met to bid 
him the last good-by, and to say a few kind words at 
parting. The frequency with which death has visited 
us of late should remind us of the uncertainty of life, 
and of the certainty that the fate of those who have so 
recently left us will soon be ours, and should impress 
upon our minds the importance of doing all we can to 
add to the happiness of each other during the short 
time we shall remain here on earth. As death dimin- 
ishes the number of those who have been so intimately 
associated together, let each survivor estimate more 
highly and treat more kindly those who remain. Let 
all our conflicts be professional, not personal. As man 
dislikes to do that which he is compelled to, and as the 
contests of lawyers in the line of their profession are 



MEMOIR. 



43 



in the discharge of duties imposed, they may come to 
dish'ke controversy and to seek to avoid it. But whether 
this be the case or not, I am well satisfied that, though 
the life of a lawyer be one of contest, there is no class 
of men who so readily distinguish the professional from 
the personal ; and though they may strive strenuously, 
inflexibly, stubbornly about the differences of others, 
none have greater forbearances and liberality in rela- 
tion to their own. None are more disposed to adjust 
them fairly and honorably. Let us cultivate this spirit 
of forbearance and liberality in our intercourse with 
each other, and let us endeavor in all respects to make 
smooth the many rough places to be found in the path 
of a lawyer's life, and let us, remembering that the frail- 
ties of each other are necessary incidents to humanity, 
endure them patiently or remove them gently and 
kindly. 

The court concurs in the sentiments which the bar 
have so kindly expressed in their resolutions, and I 
have listened with much interest to that which has been 
so well said in praise of the deceased in the remarks 
made in presenting them. 

The deceased was indeed a highly distinguished 
member of our profession, one whose reputation for 
knowledge of the law, and for talents and skill as an 
advocate, was widely extended ; and it was universally 
acknowledged by those who knew him to be of the 
very highest order. He was a man of great natural 
ability, and he had the well-cultivated intellect of one 
who had devoted much time to study and reflection. 
He was possessed of remarkable versatility of talents, 



44 



MEMOIR. 



was well versed in all the black-letter learning of the 
law, and in the changes which it had undergone. He 
was an excellent special pleader. His papers in chan- 
cery and common law pleading, and in the drafting of 
instruments of all kinds, were models of excellence. 
In all respects he was a thorough, and yet, what is un- 
usual, he had also a brilliant poetical imagination. He 
was gifted with close logical powers; he had a clear 
and correct appreciation of the application of the prin- 
ciples of law to the case at bar, in his discussions of 
questions of law to the court \ and he had a pleasant, 
agreeable, ornate, and persuasive eloquence while ad- 
dressing the jury. There was often anecdote in his 
argument, and always argument in his anecdote. He 
had a happy faculty of amusing his hearers, and con- 
vincing them while he amused them. His power was 
great in invective, sarcasm, and ridicule, and no draft 
by him on the firm of Wit & Humor was ever dishon- 
ored for want of funds. Laborious and careful in the 
preparation of his cases, able, ingenious, and thorough 
in the management of the trial, with great quickness of 
apprehension, and with an unusually large share of the 
never- surrender element in his composition, well read 
in the law, well informed in what Pope calls the proper 
study of mankind. Take him for all in all, he was one 
of the most able and successful of the members of the 
bar of this State, and he will be long remembered as 
such by those he leaves behind him. 

It was not, however, merely as a lawyer that he was 
prominent. He was fond of the study of philosophy, 
and he had acquired much knowledge of the arts and 



MEMOIR. 



45 



sciences. He was a scholar of unusually good acquire- 
ments in belles-lettres. He had a taste for things ele- 
gant, and it has been well and truly said, that 

"A sense of elegance we rarely find 
The portion of a mean or vulgar mind." 

He' had a taste for the fine arts, and he was fond of 
poetry, and was himself a poet who might have become 
distinguished as such were it not for the necessity of 
devoting so much of his time and attention to his 
large practice as a lawyer. He was an omnivorous 
consumer of books, and he had learned something 
about everything to be found in them, and he was un- 
commonly thorough on many subjects about which he 
had read. He could converse well about Blackstone 
or Shakspeare, Kent's Commentaries or Moore's Melo- 
dies, Fearne on Contingent Remainders, or Fern Leaves 
by Fanny Fern, Story on Promissory Notes or the 
Wood Notes Wild of Burns, Ferard on Fixtures or 
Gulliver's Travels, the measure of damages or of ver- 
sification. In short, he possessed a combination of 
superior mental qualities, and an amount and diversity 
of knowledge rarely, if ever, found united in the same 
person. 

His life had been an eventful one as a civilian and 
as a soldier, and it was pleasant and instructive to hear 
him converse about the past and speculate about the 
future, and to listen to his shrewd remarks about men 
and things. He had known adversity, and, more lately, 
prosperity; and though his experience of the former 
had given to his character a tinge of misanthropy, 



46 MEMOIR. 

still he was always ready to relieve those who were 
suffering as he had suffered while in adversity; and 
there are many instances of his quietly and unostenta- 
tiously assisting those who were down in the battle of 
life. 

He is gone, and we shall never behold him more ! 
Never again enjoy the charm of his conversation ; 
never listen to the sound of his voice in this hall, nor 
clasp his hand in token of friendly greeting ; never 
again will he take part in the intellectual contests of 
this arena, where he has fought so well his many battles. 

"That tongue is silent now! That silent tongtie 
Could argue once; could jest, or join the song; 
Could give ad\ice, could censure or commend, 
Or chami the sorrows of a drooping friend." 

As weary and heavily laden with life's trials and 
cares we journey on towards that resting-place, which 
he has reached before us, let us always hold in grateful 
remembrance one who did so much while he was with 
us to lighten the burden. The judge of this court can 
never forget how much he is indebted to the deceased 
for the assistance which, by his research and learning, 
he has rendered. This is not the time nor the place to 
speak of defects in his character. If he had any frail- 
ties (and I recollect none among the dead who had not, 
nor among the living who have not), we could each, 
nevertheless, have said of him while he was living, — 

" with all thy faults I love thee still." 

And now having lost him we can all say with sincerity 



MEMOIR. 47 

that we deeply deplore the death of an eminent mem- 
ber of our profession, and of a kind-hearted, agreea- 
ble, and intellectual man, whose society has afforded us 
much instruction and delight, and one whose place 
can never be filled. 

x\s a well-deserved tribute of respect to his memory, 
the court will cause the resolutions of the bar to be 
spread upon its records as requested. 

Saturday, September 23d, 1871, memorial pro- 
ceedings were had in the Supreme Court of Illinois, 
then in session at Ottawa. Upon the opening of 
the court, Hon. T. Lyle Dickey arose and said : 

May it please your Honors : At the last term of this 
court Oliver C. Gray was v/ith us. His voice is now 
hushed in death. His career on earth was closed on 
Monday, July 31st, 1871. 

A meeting of the bar held on the next day adopted 
resolutions of respect to his memory, and directed me 
to present them to this court, and ask that they be 
spread upon its record.* 

Chief Justice Lawrence replied as follows: 

The court unites with the bar in mourning the de- 
cease of Mr. Gray, and fully concurs in what has been 

••■ [After presenting the resolutions to the Supreme Court, Hon. Mr. 
Dickey delivered a eulogy upon the deceased, but as it is essentially like 
that which the same gentleman delivered before the Ottawa bar, and 
which has already passed under the eye of the reader, we have thought 
proper to omit it.] 



48 MEMOIR. 

said in honor of his memory. His professional position 
was very high. Nature had richly endowed him with 
intellectual power, and his fine faculties were thoroughly 
trained and disciplined in the uses of his profession. 
But he was more than a lawyer of sound and accurate 
learning, — more than an eloquent and logical advocate, 
— he adorned his professional life with a degree of literary 
and scholarly culture rarely to be found among active 
members of the bar, and the poetical fragments to which 
allusion has already been made, are so fine in conception, 
and so exquisite in versification, as to show very clearly 
his power to have won a place among our poets, if his 
life had been devoted to that purpose. In his death our 
profession has suffered a great loss, and we unite with 
the bar in tendering our sympathy to his bereaved family 
and friends. The resolutions will be spread upon the 
record, and the court will adjourn. 

Mr. Gray had a large acquaintance of literature, 
and was, we will say, a poet. His profession as a 
lawyer did not entirely satisfy him. He was more 
than the mere lawyer: he was a many-sided man, 
and had a varied mental capacity. He had a 
manifold taste, and found pleasure in all depart- 
ments of science and literature. And into what- 
ever field he entered, he returned not without 
bearing precious sheaves ^^'ith him. Into all, he 
entered to study and get truth. 

Like all original men, he was more than his 
simple profession. There are men who are limited 
bv their own technical calling forever, and such 



MEMOIR. 



49 



men are never great nor grand in that calling. 
There are men who widen out in their knowing, 
until they see all things in eternal relations. These 
are the great men in the particular vocation they 
may choose. They make the true advocates, 
physicians, theologians. Mr. Gray belonged to 
this class of men. He saw that the law had uni- 
versal affinities, an original kinship with all the 
professions, with all knowledges, sciences, truths. 
And hence, in great legal trials, it would come 
to pass that the law, as he expounded it, would 
speak in all tongues, — in the tongue of philosophy, 
science, or poetry. 

Mr. Gray was an extensive and intelligent reader. 
He did not cram himself with books, but he read 
as he had need, and digested what he read. He 
never lost his individuality in his reading. No 
matter how grand the thought, or brilliant the 
intellect of an author, Mr. Gray maintained his 
selfhood. What he read he used, but was not used 
by what he read. He was something in himself, 
and not a mere imitator or echo of another. 

His literary taste was exquisite. In glancing 
over the little he has written, one can see at once 
that he held communion with the choicest souls, 
and found companionship with the authors that 
never die. 

But he loved poetry, — had a passion for it. He 
was himself a poet born, not made, and began 
E 4 



50 



MEMOIR. 



to speak in music almost in his boyhood. And 
thus, perhaps, he had the vision to see that the 
true poem is also the true law and the true science, 
that law and science have their groundwork in 
poetry, and that, in the highest estate of the soul, 
all truth will orb itself in song. 

The poems of Mr. Gray may be said to be fugi- 
tive, written in the brief intervals that he was able 
to husband from a very large and constantly grow- 
ing legal practice. They, therefore, lack the care- 
ful finish and artistic completeness that the critic 
looks for. As another has said, who has given 
them something of a critical reading: 

"It is a source of regret that the poems had not un- 
dergone the careful revision of their author. It was 
undoubtedly the purpose of Mr. Gray to collect, sys- 
tematize, and classify his scattered writings, and, above 
all, to have given several of the poems a metrical finish, 
which was overlooked in the haste of almost unpre- 
meditated composition. The grave has closed over 
this, as over so many other cherished designs of that 
fertile brain and generous heart, and the poems will go 
to the public in the careless garb in which they first 
appeared. There is certainly enough beauty in the 
conception of these poems, their striking, and, at times, 
exquisitely delicate imagery, their glow and impassioned 
movement, and the wealth of fancy which enriches 
them, to compensate for occasional deficiencies of 
measure. The critical taste may suspend its judgment 
on defective quantities, in view of the genuine poetic 



MEMOIR. 



51 



sensibility which animates and warms up these verses, 
and the rich, p re imagery which so abundantly sparkles 
through them." 

And yet what makes poetry is not simply cor- 
rect measure, the grammatical dactyl or iambic, — 
is not the perfect body in which it dresses itself, — 
but the soul it has in it, the rhythm and heat and 
strength and beauty it awakens in one's thought 
and kindles in one's blood. And this rhythm and 
heat and strength and beauty may be, and have all 
been, where the yardstick of the mere critic dis- 
covered the mechanics of the poem to be ill and 
awkward. For it is with poetry often as it is with 
men : not always he of the finest physique has 
the most eloquent spirit or the warmest and ten- 
derest heart. 

Many of the poems are brief impromptu effu- 
sions. Of these, a large number were written 
when Mr. Gray had scarcely risen above boyhood. 
Of course, many lack the method and maturity of 
a riper age and profounder experience. Still, we 
give them in this volume, not because of any par- 
ticular merit we see in them, but rather because 
they contain prophecies of the man who was to 
say truer and deeper things; and because they 
have their little histories, which will make them 
souvenirs to very many who admired and loved 
their author in his riper and rounder manhood. 
One who knew him, in a finely-written review 



52 MEMOIR. 

under the head of " Gossip with the Poets," thus 
speaks of Mr. Gray: 

*'We need not confine oursehes to standard works 
to find the ring of the true metal. What may be 
called a perfect verse is haunting our memory now, 
from the Song of the Cable, by Gray, of Ottawa: 

' Drop me down m the deep while the tide is asleep. 
And a speU is upon the wave !' 

"The same writer says in the 'Sea Coral's Dream:' 

' Upward build through sea-green portals. 

Lost Atlantis — ^home for mortals — 
Occidental el&n island such as loomed on Plato's sight ; 

An august domain for races — 

Tenants on Life's hid oases ; 
Let the base be laid in alence, let the summit rest in light !' 

" We could wish this sedate man would bend oftener 
to the l}Te, when such strains flow from his touch." 

Of prose, ^Ir. Gray has left us little. His ad- 
dress on Freemasonr\% and his oration on Robert 
Burns, comprise the sum of his effort in this direc- 
tion. These are both able productions, and his 
oration on Robert Burns is characterized by a 
tender appreciation and intelligent apprehension 
of this most unique and saddest child of song. 

It remains for us to say a word of Mr. Gray at 
home before we close this memoir. Home is the 
final test of one's character. Many behave well 
on the street, at the bar, in the pulpit, in the work- 
shop, on the battle-field, in the public assembly. 



MEMOIR. 53 

who are unable to bear the test of home, — who, 
at the fireside, are peevish, fretful, cross-grained, 
and ignoble. Home is the mirror in which one's 
true and dominant self at last will be revealed. 

What a man will be, in his own family, is almost 
invariably foretold by his behavior in childhood to 
his mother. The boy that loved his mother and 
ministered to her in a cheerful obedience, and 
stood strong and faithful to her in trial and old 
age, will, when a man, be a magnanimous husband, 
and stand like an alp by his wife, to shelter her, and 
will be tender to her in all the ordeals of her life. 
We have seen how Oliver C. Gray loved his mother 
in his boyhood. So did he love his wife, whose 
widowed soul holds him in almost worshipful re- 
membrance. What- he was as boy at home with 
his mother, that he was as husband, — kind, affec- 
tionate, trusting, patient, strong, gentle, and true. 

Pittsburgh, January, 1872. 



MASONIC ORATION. 

Delivered at Princeton, III., a. d. 1859. 



Friends and Brothers, — On my first visit to your 
beautiful village, I am heartily glad to meet you, one 
and all, on the natal day of the patron saint of our order, 
— St John the Evangelist, — a name alike consecrated to 
Freemasonry and our holy religion. 

To-night we come from the Holy Lodge of the St. 
Johns at Jerusalem to greet you; but I regret extremely 
that the partiality of my brethren should have selected 
me as the mouth-piece for our ancient and honorable in- 
stitution, — an institution more ancient than the Golden 
Fleece or Roman Eagle, and more honorable than the 
Star and Garter, the crowns of kings and diadems of 
princes, — ancient, as having existed from time whereof 
the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, and 
honorable, as tending in every particular so to render 
all men who will conform to its precepts. 

In presenting the claims of the Fellowship, I feel very 
much like the silly Athenian, who, having a splendid 
mansion for sale, carried around with him a single brick 
(54) 



MASONIC ORATION. 



55 



as a sample. The dry details of the law profession are 
well calculated to chill poetic ardor, and turn into the 
dullest prose imaginable even a eulogy upon one of 
the most beautiful institutions of the times. Although 
we have nectar as sparkling as Hebe's hand ever bore, 
and ambrosia sweet as celestial lip ever tasted in the 
fabled days, yet to such a banquet I cannot invite you. 
A mere neophyte myself, just passed the charmed thresh- 
old, — enamored of the gorgeous splendors of the vesti- 
bule, and astonished at the magnificent array of symbolic 
tracery upon the walls, which crowds upon the eye at 
each advancing step, instead of attempting to describe 
them, I feel more like craving information, and uttering 
the dying wish of the immortal Goethe, '' Give me more 
light. Lord, — give me more light." 

High as St. John the Evangelist stands upon the cal- 
endar of the church, Freemasonry has assigned him a 
still higher position. 

From the building of the Temple to the Crusade, Ma- 
sonic Lodges were dedicated to Solomon King of Israel, 
our first Grand Master. 

Among the various orders of knighthood that were 
found upholding the flowery banner of the Cross in 
those chivalric wars, none were more conspicuous than 
the noble and magnanimous order of the Knights of St. 
John. So great was the esteem in which they were held 
that Hallam, in his "Middle Ages," records that Don Al- 
phonso, King of Castile and Aragon, on his death-bed, 
being childless, by his will bequeathed his crown and 
kingdom to the order of Knights Templar, and every 
Pope, from St. Peter down to Pope Clement V., in the 



56 MASONIC oration: 

fourteenth century, patronized our noble order. Their 
valor in battle and their wisdom in council had never 
been questioned, and their standard fluttered proudly 
in the breeze as the Christian hosts lay encamped before 
the walls of the Holy City. 

Our brethren of the ancient craft, or Svmbolic Ma- 
sonry, went forth also to aid in redeeming the sepul- 
chre of our Saviour from the hands of the infidel. Between 
these and the Knights of St. John there existed a recip- 
rocal feeling of kindness and brotherly love, strengthened 
by long association and continued struggles in their 
sacred mission. On the plains of Jerusalem they entered 
into a solemn compact, and it was mutually agreed be- 
tween them that from thenceforward all Lodges whose 
members acknowledged the divinity of Christ should 
be dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St. John the 
Evangelist, reserving to our Jewish brethren the right 
of dedicating their Lodges still to King Solomon; and to 
commemorate that distinguished event, there has since 
been represented in every regular and well-governed 
Lodge a point within the circle, etc. 

We have borrowed his birthday from the Scandinavian 
mythology. It was the magnificent Gothic festival 
which was celebrated in honor of Thor, the Scandina- 
vian Jupiter, and was astronomical in its origin and 
references. It commenced at the winter solstice, and was 
commemorative of the creation; for, being the longest 
night in the year, they assigned to it the formation of 
the world from primeval darkness, and called it Mother 
Night ; and as the nights began to shorten and the days 
to increase as the sun acquired strength in his journey 



MASONIC ORATION. 57 

to the north, so they hailed with festivities this time of 
increasing light and coming comfort. When Christi- 
anity was first promulgated to the northern nations of 
Europe, the people were unwilling to relinquish their 
annual rejoicing, and thus the Yule-Feast of the Goths 
was applied to the nativity of Christ, and became 
Christmas. The Scandinavians in like manner celebrated 
the summer solstice — the shortest night and the longest 
day — in honor of Odin, their god of battles. Freema- 
sonry, borrowing both these splendid myths, has made 
the summer solstice, on the 24th June, the birthday of 
John the Baptist, and the winter solstice was assigned as 
the birthday of St. John the Evangelist, just as the vernal 
equinox, when the days and nights are equal, was as- 
signed as the birthday of St. Patrick, — the patron saint 
of Ireland. 

We therefore celebrate this day, and set it apart as a 
day of thanksgiving. For years continued blessings 
have been showered upon our country and our brother- 
hood. To-day plenty fills all the borders of our extended 
empire, — 

"And Peace 
Pipes on her pastoral hillock a languid note, 
And watches her harvests ripen, her herds increase, 
And the cannon-bullet rusts on the slothful shore. 
And the cobweb woven across the cannon's throat, 
Shakes its threaded tear in the winds for evermore." 

To-day the star of empire, in its circuit from the east to 
the west, halts in the mid-heavens and stoops down from 
its home on high to bless us. To-day thousands through- 
out our fair Union have met, as we have met, to feed 



58 MASONIC ORATION. 

the perpetual fires that burn upon our holy altar, like 
the vestal virgins of Rome, — 

" Chaste as the icicle that curdled by the frosts from purest snow 
And hangs on Dian's Temple." 

We have met to offer up to' the great I Am the in- 
cense of thankful hearts, more acceptable a sacrifice than 
the blood of victims, and to drink together once more 
at '•' Siloa's brook that flows fast by the oracle of God." 

To-day our brethren come from the Aroostook and 
the Rio Grande to offer their oblations at this shrine. 
They come from the granite hills of New England with 
hearts as firm and true as their emblem rock on which 
the sure foundations of the earth are laid. They come 
from the palmetto groves of the Carolinas, and from 
the Everglades of Florida, laden with perfume from their 
orange homes. They come from the wilds of the Co- 
lumbia, 

" WTiere rolls the Oregon and hears no sound 
Save its own dashing." 

They come from mountain glens of the great Sierra 
Nevada, from that far-off gold land, where on hillside 
above blooms an endless flora, and in the valleys be- 
neath rivers, freighted with the glitter of gold, roll ever 
on to the calm western sea. 

And the brotherhood from the broad prairies of out 
own State send their joyous greeting to the mystic tie in 
every land. Yes, everywhere songs of praise from happy 
hearts cheer the welkin, and hail this festive gala day of 
our fraternity. 

Freemasonry has descended as a boon from former 



MASONIC ORATION. 



59 



generations. Our fraternity stands to-day in the pride 
of old age, hoary with the weight of years, like a pyra- 
mid in the solitude of time, around whose base the waves 
of bygone ages have washed without wasting, and upon 
whose summit sits a halo of refulgent glory. She carries 
the mind back to the Crusades of the Middle Ages, when 
the Knights Templar struggled for the sepulchre of our 
Saviour, — stretching back to the end of the Babylonish 
captivity, when Zerrubbabel, prince of Judah, rebuilt 
the House of the Lord ; back to the time when the wise 
king of Israel deposited the Ark of the Covenant in the 
Holy of Holies, when the great Temple was finished; 
back to the time when Bezaleel and Aholiab built the 
Tabernacle by divine command ; back to the time when 
Jehovah revealed his name, and delivered the law to 
Moses at the burning bush, as he kept the flocks of Jethro, 
priest of Midian; back to the time when, at Padanaram, 
in the visions of the night Jacob saw the mystic ladder 
reaching from earth to heaven, upon which the angels 
ascended and descended, bearing messagesof mercy from 
God to fallen man ; back to the time when the patriarch 
Abraham in his open tent received the blessing, and 
the promise that his progeny should be as the stars of 
heaven for multitude; back to the time when Enoch, 
in anticipation of the deluge, buried in the bowels of 
Mount Moriah the sacred pillars on which he chiseled 
the arts and sciences of his day. 

Freemasonry was great and respected before the wolf 
that suckled Romulus and Remus howled upon the banks 
of the Tiber, and 



6o MASOXIC ORATION. 

"The Xiobe of nations! there she stands, 
Childle-s ■. nd crownless in her voiceless woe, 
The Goth, the Christian, time, war, flood and fire. 
Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride." 

Freemasonry 

" Saw her glories star by star expire," 

and 

" She who was named eternal, and arrayed 

Her warriors but to conquer, — she who veiled 
Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed 
UntU. the o'er-canopied horizon failed," 

has passed away, but Freemasonry remains. 

Freemasonry was great and respected before the smoke 
of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and before ever a 
gladiator stood in the Flavian amphitheatre. 

The Papacy of Rome is ancient, but the long line of 
Supreme Pontiffs is as a thing of yesterday, when com- 
pared with our venerable institution. 

The monarchy of Great Britain is ancient, but Free- 
masonry was great and respected ages before the Saxon 
first set foot upon her shores ; and to-night, in England, 
the encampment of Baldwin, which was established at 
Bristol by Richard the Lion-hearted and the Templars 
who returned with him from Palestine, hold their regular 
meeting in high festival, in honor of our patron saint. 

Freemasonry was great and respected before the Re- 
public of Venice was founded ; before Grecian eloquence 
was heard in the" Areopagus ; before an oracle was ever 
consulted at Delphos; before the philosophy of Plato and 
Aristotle were taught in the shades of the Lyceum or 
the groves of the Academy ; before a pilgrimage was ever 
made to the shrine at Mecca ; before Homer wrote the 



MASONIC ORATION. - 6 1 

Iliad. The Republic of Venice is gone, as if it never 
had been, but Freemasonry Remains. The hush of cen- 
turies is on the lips of the orators of Athens, but Free- 
masonry still survives. For ages the oracle of Apollo has 
given back no answer, and the proud philosophy of 
Greece has bowed in humility to the irresistible spirit 
of the times, and, after having wooed and won the world's 
memory, yielded at last to the philosophy of Bacon, 
and the reveries of these ancient masters live only in 
the wild dream of the scholar as he brushes the cobwebs 
from his library. Thousands of years have passed away, 
and the land of Priam lives only in song. Thousands 
of years have passed away since the conquering Achilles 
bore the vanquished Hector in triumph round the walls 
of Troy, and the deeds of the descendants of the ancient 
Teucer are pensioners upon the pen of the blind old 
man of Scio, — deeds that " ought not to wither, though 
the earth forgot her empire, with a just decay." 

But Freemasonry still survives. She stands to-day a 
beacon of light and a proud memorial of truth, and the 
attentive ear still receives the mystic word from the in- 
structive tongue, and the mysteries of our order are safely 
lodged in the repository of faithful breasts. 

While these brilliant circumstances grace her annals 
and render her venerable, Freemasonry still presents 
herself in the vigor of youth, with no wrinkles upon her 
brow, no stain upon her escutcheon, — she links the 
modern with the ancient civilization, she stands upon 
the ruins of the bowers of Eden, vindicating her claims 
to existence upon the fallen condition and helpless de- 
pendency of humanity, and hopes at last to aid in re- 



62 MASOXIC ORATION. 

storing the race to its first estate, and man to the throne 
of the Grand Master of the universe. For years she 
has, with an open hand, dispensed her blessings broad- 
cast ; like the dew of heaven, is shed in the quiet 
watches of the night, — unseen indeed, but qwqx felt in 
the freshness and verdure it contributes to produce. 
Like the magic dew which falls from the moon upon the 
pestilential airs of Egypt, after the overflowing of the 
Nile, whose virtue is said to be so balmv and so heal- 
ing that when the first drop descends even contagion 
dies, and loveliness invigorates and reanimates the 
earth. 

Years of trial and persecution find our order to-day 
more flourishing than at any former period. Like the 
cinnamon-tree, which, when bruised by the axe of the 
relentless woodsman, only fills the air with increased 
odor, so persecution has only rendered our fellowship 
more ennobling and sublime. Masonry has had her 
hours of darkness and trouble, but thev have been so 
brief as almost to be imperceptible. They have been 
like night in the summer of the polar clime. The dawn 
of the succeeding morning breaks and reddens in the 
east before the last ray of the preceding arctic sunset has 
faded from the western horizon. Happily for the world, 
the once very general antipathy to secret societies has 
diminished in exact ratio as the principles of the order 
have been diffused, and the benefits bestowed have 
been realized. Happily for mankind, all opposition is 
now confined to the feeble assaults of superstitious bigots 
and arrant Pharisees, which soon will have 



MASONIC ORATION. 63 

" Gone glimmering through the things that were — 
A school boy's tale, the wonder of an hour." 

As Anteus, the fabled giant, renewed his strength 
every time he touched mother earth from which he 
sprang, so we have met to renew our vows and rejuve- 
nate our vigor by recurring to those first principles upon 
which our fraternity is founded. Whole ages of glory 
lie in the bright track over which we have traveled ; 
all of our past has been prosperity, — all of our present 
is pregnant with blessings, — all our future augurs of 
hope and triumph. 

To the fabled heavens of the ancient heathen poets 
a new star was added every century, but every year a 
new star appears in our mystic firmament. As new 
and manifold duties press upon us, our institution seems 
to acquire new strength and beauty adequate to the 
occasion which requires its exercise, as the arch of the 
sky at midnight, when all the heavens twinkle with 
crystalline delight, bears its burden of starry beauty 
with the same ease as when, in the dimness of twilight, 
evening's one blue star hangs in throbbing gleam above 
the horizon. 

A defense of secret societies at this late day would 
seem to be a work of supererogation. Masonry, in 
imitation of the secret and inscrutable ways of God, and 
copying the workings of all nature in obedience to di- 
vine law, lays her plans in secrecy and silence ; and 
only when all the discordant elements with which works 
are harmonized in the Lodge, does she go forth into 
the world to practice those divine precepts, taught there 
only to the initiated, which raise the virtues, animate the 



64 ■ MASONIC ORATION. 

bliss, and sweeten all the toils of human life. For in 
the mute land of silence, where ear hath not heard, and 
in the mystic deeps of secrecy, where eye hath not seen, 
forever dwells and forever works the still and invisible 
spirit of God ', and only when the work is done comes 
there from the fathomless darkness the fiat, Let there 
be light. Silence and secrecy are the harbingers of all 
revelation and all good work. As it was in the begin- 
ning, so now and ever, out of darkness comes light, 
and out of secrecy come all great results. 

The bee will not show his temple-craft to the open 
eye of day, but he builds ever in the silence and secrecy 
of darkness, whilst his fellow-laborers go out in the 
first light of the morning, to touch the blossom which 
opens to its kiss, and to beg the honey dew-drop, which 
the darkness of night has distilled with mystic alchemy, 
in the bright cup of the flower. The spirit of beauty 
will not form the pearl amid the auroral radiance of 
earth. She collects not her materials from the spark- 
ling top foam of the wave-crest, where the storm-king 
rides, and rules with noise and tempest the upper sea. 
No, but far down in the deep ocean — in darkness where 
the light-bearer never visits, and in silence, where the 
tempests bear no rule or mastery, the pearl is moulded 
and cradled in its shell, and worn by mortals as a glow- 
ing witness that light and beauty ever spring from dark- 
ness and silence. It is in the bud that the rose, the 
oldest emblem of secrecy, steals its color from the sky. 
While a bud, it borrows its blushes from the silent night, 
and there it folds them up in secrecy, until all is ready, 
bursting into bloom only to show its beauty to the gaze 



MASONIC ORATION, 65 

of day. Birds do not carol in the meridian hour, or 
amid the city's tumult, but in the woody depths and 
primeval solitudes, in the dimness of dawn and twi- 
light, pour forth their melodious roundelays; and the 
nightingale, the sweetest of them all, sings only to the 
silent and secret ear of night. The glad summer note 
of the swallow is twittered from his nest in the cottage 
wall. But the wild scream of the eaglet is only heard 
from the precipice top, where silence reigns and makes 
all else her slaves. It is there that 

" He clasps the crag with hooked hands, 
Close by the sun, in lonely lands, 
Ringed with the azure \vorld he stands. 
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls. 
He watcheth from his mountain walls, 
Then like a thunder-bolt he falls." 

Yes, the fierce emblem bird of our native land, born 
in his lonely eyrie, cradled and fledged in the silent 
cloud, with an aspiration ever for light, mounts up to 
meet the sun at his coming, feeds in his noontide 
beam, and screams in pride his war-note only to the 
tempest and the storm. 

What abeautiful illustration and sanction of silence and 
secrecy was the building of Solomon's Temple ! The 
plan was given by Jehovah to Moses alone, apart from 
all the hosts of Israel, amidst the thunders of Horeb, so 
that no ear but his should hear it, or his holy name. The 
site was selected by God himself, and hallowed by the 
most brilliant scenes in all Bible history. It was on Moriah, 
the mount of vision, once the threshing-floor of Oman, 
the Jebusite. It was the spot where God had proved 
Y^ 5 



66 MASONIC ORATION. 

the faith of the patriarch Abraham, when he com- 
manded him to offer up Isaac, his only son, as an atone- 
ment, alone and absent from kith or kindred, and from 
mortal eye. It was the spot where David met and 
appeased the destroying angel. It was the spot where, 
in after-time, the great sacrifice was made, in silence, 
as when the lamb is dumb before the slaughter, and in 
the darkness of the frowning heavens. God would not 
permit David to touch the work, for war and tumult 
had been his calling. It was reserved for Solomon, a 
quiet man of peace and secret counsels. Prophecy, 
ages before, had enjoined that the habitation of God 
should not be polluted in the building by the sound of 
any metal tool. The stone were all hewed, squared, 
and numbered in the quarries of Zeradatha, where they 
were raised; the brazen work was all cast upon the 
clay grounds of Succoth, on the banks of Jordan ; the 
timbers were all felled and prepared in the forests of 
Lebanon, and the whole was set up by wooden mallets 
prepared for the purpose ; and when the building was 
completed, its several parts fitted with such exact nicety 
that it had more the appearance of the handiwork of 
the Supreme Architect of the universe than of human 
hands. How eminently fitting that all discord should 
be confined to the mountains, the quarries, and the 
plains ! 

How noiseless and how secret was the reign of love, 
when the light-fiat burst on the rude and benighted . 
void, and how silently did the sceptre glide from the 
genius of darkness! Alone in the illimitable gloom, 
the Universal Love-spirit echoed its own thought unto 



MASONIC ORATION. 67 

itself, ''Let there be light, and there was light." As 
yet there was no human thought to wonder at the grand 
design, — no human knee to bend in adoration and in 
awe before the high Designer, — no human heart to be 
the shrine, where alone in spirit and in truth, there 
could be worship to the veiled Unknown. No cherubim 
or seraphim existed to harp Him honor in the Temple 
of Infinity, nor had the voiceless chant of Holy, Holy, 
Holy, yet rung from angelic lips. 

How secret was the charge given to. the starry host, 
when marshaled at the will of Love, the morning stars, 
singing together for joy, were taught their work to blaze 
and bless throughout all coming time ! How silent was 
the bright procession, when orb after orb, and sphere 
after sphere, passed in pageant and review before the 
Omniscient Eye, rolling ever on through the boundless 
labyrinth of space, without a track or footprint, but 
guided ever in their fantastic mission alone by the spirit- 
finger of God, without a clash that silent brotherhood 
making ever, as they move along in harmony, music 
which delights the ear of Jove ! 

Such are the evidences of nature in favor of secret 
concert of action, and Revelation equally gives its seal 
of approbation to the same sublime teaching. From the 
mount comes the divine voice, '' When thou doest alms, 
let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, 
that thine alms may be secret." ''When thou prayest, 
enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, 
pray to thy Father," which is in secret; and singular, 
yet true, there is no instance on record where our Saviour 
prayed in public. When He touched the eyes of the two 



68 MASONIC O RATIO X. 

blind men, their sight was straightway restored, and He 
charged them, saying, '•' See that no man know it." 

He did not take with Him to the mountain his twelve 
disciples, to see the transfiguration, when Moses and 
Elias appeared and talked with Him, and the bright 
cloud which overshadowed Him was only seen, and the 
voice of the cloud, saying, " This is my beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased, ' ' was only heard by Peter and 
James and John, and He charged them, saying, "Tell 
this vision to no. man." 

So poetic, so sublime, and so godlike is silence, that 
we find it deified in all the ancient mythology. The 
Egyptians worshiped Harpocrates, the son of Isis, as 
the God of Silence. He was represented as a perpetual 
youth, crowned with a mitre, holding in his left hand 
the cornucopia, while a finger of the right hand crossed 
the lips. In Rome, the image of Tacita, or the Goddess 
of Silence, was placed upon the altar of Volupta, or 
Pleasure, with its mouth sealed, because those who en- 
dure their cares in silence, and their sorrows with 
patience, do thereby obtain the greatest pleasure. The 
selection of a woman by the Romans to represent this 
divine virtue, what a rebuke on those who say thas 
women cannot keep secrets ! 

Secret association finds a sufiScient defense in its ob- 
lect, which is to induce unity of action, for order is 
Heaven's first law. 

How divine is unity ! She is the Halcyon, who sings the 
sea into stillness, and calms the billow, and well might the 
illustrious Hooker exclaim, " Her seat is in the bosom 
of God, and her voice is the harmony of the world." 



MASONIC ORATION. 



69 



No wonder that the ancients gave the harp to Apollo, 
as the symbol of his rule in heaven. No wonder that 
they fabled that Orpheus, by the power of music, tamed 
wild beasts, stayed the course of rivers, and caused 
whole woods to follow him. Descending into hell, with 
no protection but his talismanic harp, he so charmed 
Pluto himself, by the sweetness of his harmony, that he 
restored Eurydice to life, and permitted her to return 
with her husband, Orpheus, to earth again. No wonder 
that they fancied that the statue of.Memnon issued 
strains of melody when touched by the rays of the rising 
sun. No wonder that they feigned that Amphion built 
the walls of Thebes, the city of the hundred gates, 
each stone moving to its place in order at the sound of 
his lyre. No wonder that they thought that Arion, ship- 
wrecked at sea, holding on to his harp, was taken up 
by a dolphin, who was charmed by his music, and car- 
ried him safely on his back into Corinth. Extravagant 
as these myths seem to be, they are fully justified by the 
fact. Yes, "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is 
for brethren to dwell together in unity ! It is like the 
precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon 
the beard, even Aaron's beard, that went down to the 
skirts of his garment; as the dew of Hermon, and as 
the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion, 
for there the Lord commanded his blessing, even life 
for evermore." 

The mission of Freemasonry in the world is no less 
than to elevate the intellectual, moral, and social con- 
dition of the whole human family, and no brother 
doubts but that the sublime tenets of our profession, if 



70 MASONIC ORATION. 

practiced, are fully competent to the accomplishment 
of the noble task. Thus, the aim of our order is high 
and holy. 

Like Alcestes in Virgil, we set our target in the Em- 
pyrean, and shoot at the very stars, confident always, 
that though the arrow may deflect and fall below our 
aim, yet it will strike and make its mark far above the 
object at which the cold world aims. Man is a micro- 
cosm, or little world, in himself, and although there is 
a divinity which shapes our ends, rough-hew them as 
we may, yet, to a great extent, man is the artificer of 
his own fortune, and it is for him to make himself 
a Pantheon full of gods, or a Pandemonium full of 
demons. 

The Lodge is a miniature universe, and furnishes a 
perfect model of political as well as social government, 
holding out the isolated patriarchal household as the 
most perfect model of society, suggesting that that 
government is the best in which to injure the humblest 
individual were to insult the whole community. Long- 
fellow's youth, who bore upward ever amidst the snow 
and glaciers of Mont Blanc that banner with the 
strange device, "Excelsior," is but an apt emblem of 
the innate aspiration we all have for something higher 
and nobler. The law of progression and improvement 
is stamped upon all created things. Audible through 
long centuries comes to this age the low whispered 
prayer of the first radiata for a higher form of life. 
Every fossil on the stone-page was a prophet of the next 
better type which would succeed him, and every mean- 
est atomlet of matter has been waiting since the nebu- 



MASONIC ORATION. 



71 



lar era with patience to be made into thought and 
mind by this alchemical process of progression, and 
then perish to be translated still higher. Each created 
thing holds in solution all the types below it, still 
dropping the lower, one by one, as they become useless, 
and thus man possesses still many faculties and quali- 
ties of inferior animals, which must be eradicated. 
Yes, Progression is a law of being from the monad to 
the seraph. To advance that standard in the direction 
of social improvement, is the grand aim our order has 
in view. United by the cement of brotherly love and 
affection into a sacred band of brothers, among them 
no contention should exist but that noble contention, 
or rather emulation, of who can best work and best 
agree ; we learn from our fellowship, to subdue the 
passions, do unto to others as we would wish them to 
do unto us, keep a tongue of good report, maintain 
secrecy, and practice charity. Like a young Argus, 
her hundred eyes are watching ever over the wants of 
our fellows. Like a young Briareus, she stretches her 
thousand arms around the globe in loving embrace. 
The fondest hope she has is the ultimate establishment 
of a universal brotherhood, founded on perfect equal- 
ity. The ancients fabled that the monster Sphinx sat 
at the roadside and propounded her riddle to every 
passer-by ; and whoever failed to answer it she de- 
voured. Masonry, too, sits and propounds her riddle 
to every man. It is, "Where is thy brother?" Who- 
ever returns the heartless answer of Cain, "Am I my 
brother's keeper?" is not worthy of society, and, like 
Cain, should be driven from it as an outcast. We teach 



72 MASONIC ORATION. 

that in the common attributes of manhood all the race 
are peers, — all stand upon one common level, — all tend 
to one common destiny : to that undiscovered country 
from whose bourn no traveler returns. "God hath 
made of one blood all nations of men to dwell upon 
the face of the earth. ' ' Deny this revelation as we may, 
yet the universe itself is but one vast pictorial and illu- 
minated page, whereon the same sublime truth is infi- 
nitely multiplied by God's own marvelous autograph. 

" All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body nature is, and God the soul." 

The diamond must be taught its close fraternity to coal, 
as the coal already owns the plant as its brother; for car- 
bon is the basis of them all, and a small change in com- 
bination produces the great apparent difference. God is 
Love, and the kingdom of Heaven is within us. Wor- 
ship is bringing the love within us in contact and associa- 
tion with the love to God. Our only method to love 
and serve God is to love and serve our fellow-men, and 
the only evidence of our loyalty to Heaven is our love 
to humanity. This is the key-note to the tune after 
which orbs and angels march. Our fraternity adopts the 
sublime and august sentiment of Novalis, the German 
mystic, ''There is but one Temple in the world, and 
that, the body of man." Nothing is holier than this 
high form. "Bending before men is a reverence done 
to this revelation in the flesh, and we touch heaven 
when we shake hands with a human being, in hearty 
recognition of his equal manhood." Masonry repu- 
diates with contempt the aristocracy of blood, as well 



MASONIC OKA TION. 



73 



as the aristocracy of the dollar, while she bows with 
reverence to the aristocracy of merit, based upon 
higher intellect and better heart. 

" Rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
The man's the gold for a' that." 

To the lawyer who inquired of our Saviour, '' Master, 
which is the great commandment in the law?" he re- 
plied, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 
This is the first and great commandment, and the second 
it like unto it : thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
self." This, my friends, is the arcanum, — the great 
secret of our order. 

There are four great cardinal duties to the perform- 
ance of which the Mason is bound by indissoluble ties, — 
to God, to his country, to his neighbor, and to himself. 
Discarding all sectarian creeds, our order is still so fai 
interwoven with religion as to lay us under obligation 
to pay that rational homage to Deity which constitutes 
at once our duty and our happiness. We are bound 
never to mention the name of God but with that rever- 
ential awe which is due from a creature to the Creator. 
We are to implore his aid in all our laudable under- 
takings, and to esteem Him as our chief good. 

The claims of our country upon us we must at all 
times fully recognize. We must be true to her. We 
must be obedient to her laws as long as they last, and 
faithful to her flag so long as it floats, whether in mock- 
ery of peace it drooyjs in glory on the lazy air, or 

whether, with its rainbow beauties outspread, it waves 
G 



74 MASONIC ORATION. 

in triumph over the din of battle. With the hero in 
the lay of the Last Minstrel, we must say, — 

" Breathes there the man with soul so dead 
Who never to himself hath said, 
This is my own, my native land !" 

We must never forget that other patriotic sentiment, — 

" One land there is, the land of every pride. 
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the earth beside." 

To the brotherhood and to the race we owe manifold 
duties. We must relieve their wants, soothe them in 
distress, and sympathize with them in their misfortunes. 
Our heart and our hand must be forever joined in 
promoting mutual prosperity, rejoicing at each other's 
weal, and weeping at each other's woe. At the touch 
of adversity, heart should open to heart, like the touch 
of the magic spear with which the genius of Milton, in 
Paradise Lost, armed the Angel Ithuriel. "Be to a 
brother's virtues ever kind, and to his failings ever 
blind." We should ever be near and ready to succor 
each other in time of need, near and ready to raise and 
save a falling brother, warn him of approaching peril, 
whisper in his ear good and wholesome counsel, aid in 
his reformation, never forgetting that we must judge him 
with candor, admonish him of his errors with friendship, 
and reprehend him with justice. If in prison, we should 
visit him, and if we can do no more, let us at least act 
like the heroine in the Corsair did to the captive : 

" She pressed his fettered finger to her heart 
And bowed her head and turned her to depart, 
And lovely as a noiseless dream is gone — 
And was she here, and is he now alone? 



MASONIC ORATION. 75 

"What gem hath dropped and sparkles on his chain? 
The tear most sacred shed for other's pain, 
That starts at once bright, pure from Pity's mine, 
Already polished by the Hand Divine." 

When a brother is sick, we must watch over him, and 
dispense with a liberal hand the corn of nourishment, 
the wine of refreshment, and the oil of joy. When a 
brother dies, we throw our last green gifts into his grave, 
to remind us that we have an immortal part within us 
which shall survive the tomb, and which shall never, 
never, never die ; and as we give earth to earth, dust to 
dust, and ashes to ashes, we cover over his foibles and 
his memory with the broad mantle of Masonic charity. 
But love's duties extend beyond the brother's tomb. 
We must educate the orphan, and with a gentle hand 
*' temper the wind to the shorn lamb." Samaritan-like, 
we must bind up the wounded spirit of the widow, and 
not "suffer the winds of heaven even to visit her too 
roughly." 

To himself, to his wife, and to his children, the true 
Mason owes obligations, which he must also discharge. 
He must learn to subdue his passions, and to be temperate 
in all things, in his desires as well as in his affection. 
He must limit his desires in every station in life, and in 
the severe school of discipline learn to be content at 
every turn of the wheel of fortune, rising to eminence 
by merit, so that he may live respected and die re- 
gretted. Remember the moral of the fable, where Bac- 
chus, desirous of rewarding Midas, King of Phrygia, for 
some service he had rendered him, promised to grant 
Midas whatever power he most wished. The King of 



76 MASOXIC ORATION. 

Phrygia, in his folly, desired that whatsoever he touched 
should turn into gold. The wish was granted, but the 
gift was fatal and proved his ruin. To temperance we 
must add fortitude, justice, and prudence, and to pru- 
dence we must never forget to add patience, and when 
thus blended, like the hues of the rainbow, they form 
the pure, white light, which is a s}Tnbol of the glory 
around the apocalyptic thrane. Let no difficulty dis- 
courage the true Mason, but let each successive failure 
only stimulate him to renewed effort. Life, at best, is 
but an Olympic game, and eternal Fame stands, bearing 
in her trembling hand the diadem, ready to crown the 
victor. The first snowflake which falls on the naked 
rock near the summit of the Alps, melts in a moment ; 
a thousand others melt as they fall. Presently one sol- 
itary flake obtains a foothold, — a million others close 
around it, and a little snow-pile drifted in the rocky 
cleft, wanned by the sun, glides gently from where it 
fell, — ^rolls gathering ever down the height; the chamois 
bounds wildly from the glacier at its approach, and in 
a moment the peasantry in the valley are buried be- 
neath the mighty avalanche : and the patience of the 
first snowflake has accomplished a mighty wonder. You 
have heard how Cuba, like a vast coral gem, sits on the 
bosom of the Gulf, blooming like an Eden on the wave. 
You have heard how beautiful is the island-city of Havana, 
and how it looms like a floating oasis on the desert and 
storm-rocked waters ; as if Circe herself, by the mystic 
charm of her enchanted wand, had thither wooed and 
won all the fond beauties of sea and sky, in order to 
embodv to our actual eye, and thereby realize the wild 



Ma SOX J C ORATION'. 77 

dream of Plato, when in a philosophic vision, and 
through the dim vista of centuries, he saw arise toward 
the sunset sea his fair Atlantic-isle, where humanity had 
reached the bright ultimate of perfection. If the real- 
ization was gorgeous, more gorgeous and mysterious 
still was the conception and progress of the work. It 
leads the spell-bound fancy through the charmed mazes 
of mystery away back to the geological ages, long 
enough before the birth of human history, or even of 
human thought. Then one solitary coral insect, moved 
by the divine impulse, which taught him to do his duty 
and die, first laid, in the silence of the fathomless depths, 
the corner-stone of this coral-isle. Full w^ell he knew 
that his destined home was not in the darkness of the 
deep, for he felt an aspiration for the land of light, and 
prompted by the still, small voice of God, which ever 
whispered to him, ''Higher, higher," he built, and built 
evermore, higher and even higher, to the surface of the 
sea, where the floods of light sit throned on the ocean- 
wave, and blush o'er the dome of the island temple of 
the surge. Full well he knew that age would roll into 
age, — that the silent centuries and the voiceless cycles 
would come and go, — and still his toil remain undone, 
and still his work be incomplete. Full well he knew 
that these silent ages, millions of his co-workers were 
doomed to die amidst their labor. So they did; but 
as these voiceless martyrs to patience — these mute apos- 
tles of fidelity — preached ever, " Be faithful and patient 
to the end," the ranks were filled and the handicraft was 
plied busy and busier still : for they believed that the 
day would come when the light would be reached, and 



78 



MASONIC ORATION. 



that some coral-brother, in the dim and uncertain future, 
would sit above the wave, and work in light and joy 
upon the summit of that coral home, whose base was 
laid in darkness. Yes, long-suffering patience, like 
harmony, is divine. 

Faith, Hope, and Charity are the principal tenets of 
our profession. Faith is the corner-stone upon which 
our mystic edifice is erected ; Hope crowns the archway 
where our good genius enters and presides ; and Charity, 
spread over our magic Temple, like a canopy envelops 
it in purity forever. This triple chain links human 
heart to human heart, and binds us all to the throne 
of God. 

Masonry repudiates with high disdain that sentiment 
of Goldsmith's hermit : 

" What is friendship but a name, 
A charm that lulls to sleep, 
A shade that follows wealth and fame, 
And leaves the wretch to weep," 

and turns in triumph, and points to the past, which is 
full of illustrious examples. At the siege of Troy, after 
the victorious Greeks gave permission to ^neas to carry 
off whatever was dearest to him, as a Trojan and a man, 
he left behind him the Palladium, which the whole 
nation regarded as the safeguard of Troy, and bore ofif 
upon his shoulders from the flames of the burning city 
the old Anchises, his hoary-bearded sire. The Greeks, 
astonished at this eminent example of filial tenderness 
and affection, permitted him also to carry away his 
household gods ; and the genius of Virgil paints ^^neas 
at Carthage, a captive to the admiration of Dido, when 



MASONIC ORATION. 



79 



requested by the queen, at the banquet, to relate the 
glories of his past career, selecting this act as his favor- 
ite theme. 

What heart has not thrilled at the story of that Gre- 
cian daughter who, when Cymon, her aged father, was 
imprisoned and condemned to die of hunger, gained 
access to his cell and nourished him? The Greeks, 
struck dumb at the devotion of the daughter, reversed 
the sentence, and returned the old man to light and 
liberty. 

Who can forget the history of the Syracusan friends ? 
When Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, sentenced 
Pythias to die, he begged permission to return once 
more to his home to take a farewell of his wife and 
child. The tyrant-king, intending to deny this last re- 
quest, granted it upon a condition which he thought 
would be impossible for Pythias to perform. It was 
that he should procure some one to remain as security 
for his return, under equal forfeiture of his life, in case 
he failed. His friend Damon heard the condition, — 
accepted it without solicitation, and Pythias obtained 
his temporary freedom, and they parted, and in 

" Parting, they seemed to tread upon the air — 
Twin-roses by the zephyr blown apart, 
Only to meet again more close, and share 
The fragrance of each other's heart." 

The hour of execution came, and Pythias, prevented 
by adverse winds, had not yet returned. The king 
and his courtiers were present, and Damon calmly 
mounted the scaffold of execution. The royal mandate, 
'■'■Executioner, do your duty,"" had been given. A dis- 



So MASONIC ORATION. 

tant voice was heard, — the crowd gave way, and in a 
moment Pythias was on the scaffold, and in the arms of 
Damon, his benefactor. The heart of Dionysius was 
melted, — the tyrant even wept. Leaving his throne, 
and ascending the scaffold, he exclaimed, '•' Live, live, 
ye incomparable pair ! you have borne undoubted tes- 
timony to the existence of virtue, which equally evinces 
the existence of a God to reward it. Live happy, live 
renowned, and form me by your precepts, as you have 
instructed me by your example, to be worthy to par- 
ticipate in so sacred a friendship.'' How beautiful in 
life and in death was the love of Jonathan and David! 
Well might the prophet celebrate so sublime an instance 
of attachment, and exclaim that the son of Saul loved 
the Hebrew shepherd as he loved his own soul, and 
that their souls were knit together; and well might the 
Psalmist sing, " Thy love to me was wonderful, surpass- 
ing^ even the love of woman." Xoblv did David re- 
pay his friendship when he restored to Mephihosheth, 
the lame son of Jonathan, the lands of his father, and 
commanded him to eat continually at the royal table 
even with Solomon, his son. 

The genius of Sterne, in Tristram Shandy, has thrown 
around the character of L^ncle Toby a splendor which 
dwarfs even the fame of conquerors. "Go," said he 
one dav to an overs^rown flv which had buzzed about 
his nose and tormented him all dinner-time, and which 
after infinite attempts he had caught at last, as it flew 
by him, — ''go, I will not hurt a hair of thy head." 
Rising from his chair, crossing the room, he raised the 
window, and oj^ening his hand as he spoke, to let it 



MASONIC ORATION. 8 1 

escape. "Go," said he, ''why should I hurt thee? — 
this world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and 
me." Who does not feel better by having read the 
story of Lefevre, the poor lieutenant? " Thou hast left 
this matter short," said Uncle Toby to Corporal Trim, 
"and I will tell thee in what. When thou madest an 
offer of my services to Lefevre, as sickness and travel- 
ing are both expensive, and thou knowest he was but a 
poor lieutenant, with a son to subsist as well as himself 
out of his pay, that thou didst not make an offer to him 
of my purse ; because, had he stood in need,. thou know- 
est, Trim, he had been as welcome to it as myself." 
"Your Honor knows," replied the Corporal, " I had no 
orders." " True," said Uncle Toby ; " thou didst very 
right. Trim, as a soldier, but certainly very wrong as 
a man. And when thou offered 'st him whatever was 
in my house, thou shouldst have offered him my house, 
too. If we had him with us, we could tend and look 
to him, and in a fortnight he might march." "He 
will never march in this world," said the Corporal. 
"He shall march," replied Uncle Toby. "He will 
never march but to his grave," said the Corporal. " He 
shall march to his regiment," replied Uncle Toby. 
" He will die, poor soul," said the Corporal, "and what 
will become of his boy?" Cried Uncle Toby, "He 

shall not die, by !" And the accusing spirit which 

flew to heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he 
gave it in, and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, 
dropped a tear upon the word, and blotted it out forever. 
Let us, my brethren, imitate these illustrious exam- 
ples of virtue. 

6 



82 MASONIC ORATION. 

F-eercasonry, by the most impressive rites, instructs 
her devotees that the response of Zerubbabel to Darius 
the king was emphatically correct. The Persian mon- 
arch, at his feast, inquired of his courtiers which was 
the most powerful, — wine, woman, or the king. When 
the prince of Judah was asked, he replied, "Neither: 
Truth is more powerful than them all." Struck by the 
opinion of Zerubbabel, king and courtiers, of one accord, 
exclaimed, '■'•Truth is mighty, and will prevail,''' and it 
ever since has been the motto of one of the orders of 
chivalry. Without truth we are all like Theseus, and 
grope through the world, a labyrinth far wider and 
darker than that of the ancient Cretan king. With 
truth on our side, we have the silken clue of Ariadne, 
by the aid of which we can make good our escape. 

Such are the aims and teachings of our order, which 
she impresses upon the minds of her votaries by the 
most significant emblems. 

First, the All-seeing, Eye, surrounded by rays of 
light. Among the Egyptians it was the emblem of 
Osiris, who was represented by a sceptre in which was 
placed an eye. It was the symbol of the sun, who 
represented God, whose eye sees, and whose sceptre 
governs all things. It reminds the Mason of that su- 
perintending Providence, who knows the most secret 
thoughts of our hearts, and will reward us according to 
our works. 

The Beehive is an emblem of industry and sociality, 
and recommends the practice of those virtues to all 
rational creatures. It teaches us that as we came into 
the world intelligent beings, so should we always be 



MASONIC ORATION. S3 

industrious ones, never sitting down contented and at 
our ease while our fellow-creatures around us are in 
want, when it is in our power to relieve them. It re- 
minds us constantly that God could have made man 
independent of all other beings ; but as dependence 
is one of the stringent bonds of society, mankind were 
made dependent on each other for mutual protection 
and security, as they thereby enjoy better oppor- 
tunities of fulfilling the reciprocal duties of love and 
friendship to one another. 

The Coffin and the Cassia are striking emblems of 
mortality, and admonish us of the state to which we 
are all hastening with a rapidity which is symbolized 
by the Hour- Glass. Time will not permit me to go 
further. 

Such are the purposes and principles of Freemasonry. 
Friends, they are worthy of your favor. Brethren, they 
are worthy of preservation in their purity at your hands. 

To those of you who have never entered our portals, 
we have but one request to make. Never assail an in- 
stitution whose objects and principles may tend to in- 
crease the sum of human happiness, because you do not 
comprehend their bearings nor mode of operation. 
Leave such work to ignorance and superstition. 

One word to the fairer and better sex. I appeal to 
you, uninitiated matrons and maidens. To the matrons 
by that which never fails to find an answer in a woman's 
heart, — the love of her children ; and to the maiden by 
that which is equally as strong, — always to foster by 
your kindly countenance an institution to which you 
owe a lasting debt of obligation. True, indeed, you 



84 MASOiYIC ORATION. 

are excluded from our Lodge, but it is not because we 
deem you unworthy of our secrets, or unfit co-workers 
with angels, much less with us, in all good causes ; but 
if I must confess it, it is a consciousness of our own 
frailty. Love might enter the Lodge with you, jealousy 
might rankle in the breasts of brethren, and fraternal 
affection be distorted into bitter rivalry. Woman 
needs not the aid of mystic ceremonials to prompt her 
to deeds of benevolence, or •' the sweet small cour- 
tesies of life," nor the use of symbols to point her to 
the pathway of rectitude. Woman's heart is the true 
lodge where virtue reigns, and her warm and generous 
S}Tnpathies are the only incentives requisite for its 
practice. Let it not be supposed, however, that Free- 
masonrv overlooks the claims of woman on our order 
for support and protection ; nor that we are wholly 
apathetic to the sentiment that 

" The world was sad ! the garden was a \\\\6. ! 
And man t±ie hermit sighed, till woman smiled !" 

Yes, Freemasonry builds around the matron a wall of 
fire, to preserve unsullied the sanctity of the domestic 
circle ; and as the cherubim guarded the tree of life 
and knowledge in the midst of the Eden of bliss with 
a flaming sword that burned every way ; as the sleepless 
dragon, breathing fire perpetually, watched the golden 
fleece of Jason, and the golden apples in the garden of 
the daughters of Hesperus : so Freemasonry guards the 
maiden from the approach of the serpent, that allures 
but to ruin, with a shield broader, stronger, and surer 
than that of Achilles. 



MASONIC ORATION. 85 

The influence of woman in the formation of charac- 
ter is universally acknowledged. History is replete 
with brilliant examples. Coriolanus, banished unjustly 
from Rome, formed an alliance with her enemy, and 
with a victorious army returned to the gates of the 
capital, and threatened to level even the foundations 
of the city of the seven hills. The Roman women 
carried their jewels to him, and implored him to aban- 
don his design. They failed. Plis own wife next en- 
treated him to spare the city : Coriolanus turned to 
her a deaf ear ; and when all had failed, Volumnia, his 
mother, melted the heart of the hero, and Rome was 
saved. 

If the aphorism of the ancient sage was true, '' Give me 
the making of the poems of a nation, and you may make 
the laws," how much more important is the sphere of 
the mothers of our race, who, by moulding the minds 
of its sons and daughters, are intrusted with the lofty 
charge of moulding the character of a nation and shap- 
ing its destiny ! She can impart that impulse which a 
Lacedaemonian mother conceived to be the glory of her 
house, the love of battle and the clangor of arms, or, 
like gentle Hannah of the olden time, can dedicate 
the infant Samuel to be a priest of the most High God. 
The clay is in the hands of the potter, and you are an- 
swerable for the model. The softened wax and the 
sealing stariip are both in the maternal hand, and we 
hold you responsible for the impression. The sheet of 
blank paper is committed to your guardianship, and we 
charge you to look well to what shall be written upon 

it. While Freemasonry acknowledges a kindred duty 
II 



86 MASOXIC O RATIO X. 

with the mother, and her proud boast is that she aims 
at the formation of character, we are too conscious of 
our partial failure without your hearty co-operation. 
If the mothers Avill only pledge themselves to do their 
duty to tlie youth while they remain under the paren- 
tal roof, we will be responsible that your lessons of 
wisdom shall not be wholly lost upon them in man- 
hood. We will be the oak if you will be the ivy. We 
will be the Doric pillar of strength to receive the buf- 
fetings of the storm, if you will only stand by our side 
the Corinthian column of beauty, to embellish the 
mystic temple which we raise to the genius of universal 
benevolence and philanthropy. Cling to our cause as 
Ruth clung to Naomi, constant in your attachments, 
and not like Orpah, who gave the idle kiss and then 
deserted her for the idols of Moab. 

And now, my brethren of the order, our anniversary 
is ending, and we must part. When the next festival 
shall come, and brethren meet around our mystic shrine 
as we have met to-night, how sadly will our ranks be 
thinned ! Then let us see to it, and so regulate our 
lives, that when we shall be called hence we may all 
be found ready. Death on every side of us is sounding 
his dread alarum in the outer courts of our tabernacle, 
and summoning us to his silent and spectral court, alike 
from the Lodge, the Chapter, and the Encampment, 
each of which he invades without the ceremony of initia- 
tion. One by one the pillars of our mystic brotherhood 
are falling around us, and our costliest gems are dropping 
continually from our charmed circle. Three pillars will 
alone survive, — Faith, Hope, and Charity, — teaching 



MASONIC ORATION. 87 

Faith in God, Hope in immortality, and Charity to all 
mankind. Yesterday, Hope sat like a siren, filling our 
life with foscination and bewitching rapture, gilding our 
future with its fairy splendor, and intoxicating us with 
the subtle sweets of her chalice as we sipped. To-day, 
the fondest idol we can cherish and adore totters from 
its pedestal in the heart, and the pillar of our Hope is 
broken, and the cold lip almost moulders at the last 
long kiss of love, like the fruit which grows upon the 
shores of the Dead Sea, which turns to ashes, it is said, 
on the lip that touches it, and then there is a burden 
on our bosoms, and we have nothing left us to love but 
the dust, and the memory of the farewell wish. We, 
too, soon must follow. Soon the long, long sleep will 
be upon us, and there will be a hush in all our house- 
holds, and a spell upon our loved ones who linger after 
us. Unseen voices are whispering to us that — 

"We are such stuff as dreams are made of, 
And our little life is rounded with a sleep." 

Even now. Death may have shot his warning arrow. 

" Art is long, and time is fleeting. 

And our hearts, though stout and brave, 
Still, like muffled drums, are beating 
Funeral marches to the grave." 

One after another the stars in which we most delight, 
though tempting us on every side, are flickering and 
fading from our sky, reminding us that we have pitched 
our tents upon this planet but for a single night. Life 
is nomadic, and "we fold our tents like the Arab and 
as silently steal away." There is but 



SS MASOXIC ORATION. 

" One step to the white death-bed, 
One to the bier, 
One to the chamal of the dead, 
And one, oh! where?" 

The King of Terrors has already bidden us, and is 
now beckoning us to his pale feast, where his gaze, like 
the Gorgon's, will turn us into nothingness. All around 
us Nature is heard in s}TQphony, singing, — 

" Leaves have their time to fall, 
And flowers to wither at the north vsind's breath. 

And stars to set — but all, 
Thou hast a/I seasons for thine own, O Death. 

" We know when moons shall wane. 
When summer-birds from far shall cross the sea, 

WTien autumn's hue shall tinge the golden grain — 
But who shall teach \is when to look for thee ? 

"Is it when spring's first gale 
Comes forth to whisj>er where the Wolets he ? 

Is it when roses in our paths grow pale ? 
They have oru season — a/l are ours to die ! 

" Thou art where biUows foam. 
Thou art where music melts up>on the air ; 

Thou art around us in our p>eaceful home, 
And the world calls us forth — and thou art there." 

But, my brethren, go on, — go on, — and still go on, 
though our path be full of peril and illusion. Let not 
our footsteps falter, nor our hearts be daunted, nor our 
high mission thwarted, for Heaven smiles upon order, 
and the good deeds of the Mason should ever be, like 
the flower of the cemetery, which grows more lovely 
and luxuriant in the close vicinity of Death, or like the 
century plant, which blooms only when it dies. Let 



~ MASONIC 0RA7I0N. 89 

our hearts always be open, and with the same liberality 
as the Roman candidates threw their largesses to the 
electors, let iis strew our gifts from that horn of plenty 
which Providence keeps ever full of choicest bless- 
ings. Then like the dove of the deluge, hovering over 
the waste waters of life, with the olive branch of peace, 
we will at last return from our errands of mercy to 
that divine ark, which will safely waft us over this tem- 
pestuous sea of trouble; for to the eye of faith already 
overhead, the rainbow, bursting through the scattering 
clouds unfurled like a banner from the battlement above, 
shines, spanning the dark sea of life, resting its farther- 
most base on the distant ocean of eternity, while all 
within its arch seems brighter and more resplendent 
than that without, betokening to us a promise and a 
covenant of higher and better things. So may each 
brother live and act his part, that when our labor of 
love is ended in the Lodge below, we can present at 
the celestial Lodge above a long record of our welcome 
gifts of charity, so that when its portals of light open 
to receive us, may a mighty band of Masons, which can- 
not be numbered, be able, as they enter in, to chant 
the glad song of the Peri in Paradise: 

" J^Yi j'^y forever ! — our task is done, 
The gates are passed, and Heaven is won !" 



ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OX ROBERT 
BURNS. 

J.^XUARY 25TH, 1S64. 



Custom has consecrated this annual gathering of the 
clans. Yearly we meet and part, but our parting is like 
that of Keats' s lovers : 

" Parting, they seemed to tread upon the air — 
Twin-roses by the zephjT blo\vn apart. 
Only to meet again more close, and share 
The inward fragrance of each other's heart." 

^Vinter; in stern gratitude for her favorite son of song, 
who moulded all her "hoarv visage" into beautv for 
the admiration of the world, comes annually around 
to assist us in celebrating the natal day. of Genius. 

While we meet in festive union, to help "hand the 
rustic stranger up to fame," the welcome form of 
Robert Burns strides godlike in our midst, and salutes 
us with his warm and genial greeting : 

"And here's a hand, my trusty fiere, 
And gie's a hand o' thine ; 
And we'll tak a right guid willie-waught, 
For auld lang sjTie." 

And so Robert Burns lives on, and his fame is trans- 
19 ) 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 



91 



mitted from generation to generation. No Scotchman 
need be told how, one hundred and six years ago, in 
an ''auld clay biggin" on the banks of the bonny 
Doon, in sight of the auld brig of Ayr, and Alloway's 
auld haunted kirk, this model Scotsman was given to 
the world ; nor how the event was marked by a storm, 
which leveled a gable-wall, nor how the infant bard 
was hurried through the tempest to the shelter of a 
securer hovel. 

Yes, ^olus, the God of Winds, stood as usher when 
Burns was launched upon the sea of life: a portent of 
his destiny, — significant of the costly treasure which 
had been trusted to the wave, — an omen and a warning 
to the world to guard it well, and which, ill heeded, 
wrecked the vessel, but not the treasure, long before it 
reached its destined haven. 

Rude and lowly as was his birth, and doubtful as 
would seem the augury of his future greatness, the de- 
ficiency in Burns was otherwise more than recompensed ; 
for every good genius seemed to bestow upon him some 
wonderful endowment, and with them the beautiful and 
fatal boon of Genius. 

He was like the fabled Pandora, the first of mortal 
women, who, although forged by the rough hammer of 
Vulcan, yet won the name of All-gifted, as every god 
gave her some present to compensate the imperfection. 
Minerva adorned her with wisdom, and Mercury with 
the art of eloquence ; Apollo gave her music, and Venus 
garnished her with beauty; The Seasons attired her in 
their marvelous robes, and the Graces lent her all their 
alluring accomplishments. 



92 ADDRESS OX BURNS. 

Like the Cumean sibyl, he drew his inspiration from 
the heavens, but received it without the hard condition 
annexed to her fatal request. She demanded of Apollo 
to live as many years as the grains of sand in her hand, 
but unfortunately forgot to ask for the perpetual en- 
joyment of the bloom of which she was then in posses- 
sion. The boon of longevity, which the enamored 
god granted, unaccompanied by freshness and beauty, 
proved a burden rather than a benefit. But Burns got 
longevity of fame, and increasing beauty, as Time in 
his hurried flight passed over each succeeding year. 

His mind, like alembic of the alchemists, sublimated 
nothing but the most precious and costly metals, and 
his fairy fancy, like the fingers of the ancient Midas, 
turned all that it touched into the purest gold. Ideas 
and images leaped from his brain, like Pallas from the 
brain of Jupiter, in perfect and peerless panoply, and fit- 
ting words sprang to the matchless music of his numbers, 
like the polished stones did to their places in the walls 
of the hundred-gated Thebes, at the bidding of Am- 
phion's lyre. Like Pegasus, the winged horse of the 
Muses, let him strike his hoof on the flintiest rock on 
the mountain-side of Parnassus, where if any slept he 
became a poet, and there opened by magic a foun ain, 
whose waters became vocal and redolent of melody ; 
but as that Castalian fountain gushed from th: foot of 
the mountain, and not from the crest, so Burns opened 
his fountain of poetic beauty in the oasis of the heart, 
in the lowest and bleakest provinces of life. "His 
soul was like an yEolian harp, in whose strings the 
vulgar wind, as it passes through them, changes itself 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 



93 



into articulate melody." Burns borrowed nothing from 
the classics. He was no debtor to the wild dreams of 
scholars who have lingered in the shades of the Acad- 
emy and the Lyceum. He learned 

" Not from the grand old masters, 
Not from the bards sublime, 
Whose distant footsteps echo 
Through the corridors of time." 

His fingers swept no Homeric chords, and the dactyls 
and spondees of the heroic hexameter were to him for- 
bidden fruit. The Trojan siege had long since found 
its Iliad, the return of the sage Ulysses its Odyssey, 
and the stormy wanderings of the son of Anchises its 
-<!Eneid ; and now the fate of the Mouse must become 
as imperishable as the land of Priam, and Tam O'Shan- 
ter and souter Johnny must become as immortal in song 
as Achilles in dragging heroes at his chariot-wheels, or 
as the pious ^neas in founding laws and empires. 

Burns depended on the fertility of his own imagina- 
tion, and not on the myths and fabulous lore of the 
ancients, however beautiful. It was reserved for him 
to build epics upon themes which were lowly, and 
noble and heroic from their very insignificant little- 
ness. 

He had no models before him but the modest pasto- 
rals of Allan Ramsay and Robert Ferguson. Poetry in 
profusion lay hidden all around him, and it only required 
his falcon-ken to find it, and the Gyges-ring on the finger 
of his arch-enchanter, to render it visible. Like Maean- 
der, the Phrygian river, Burns ever kept the windings 
of his own sweet vale. This appointed work was to 



94 



ADDRESS OX BURNS. 



beautify life as he found it, to dignify the labor of the 
lowly, and to elevate the intellect of the peasant by 
showing him the exquisite loveliness of the commonest 
objects in life's pathway. He visited no dream-land, 
but collected his rude materials from his own neighbor- 
hood. One glance from the eye of Genius electrifies 
and startles all things into beauty. 

Though the colors are celestial, yet this graphic lim- 
ner, in his partiality, gives to the canvas only Scottish 
portraits and Scottish landscapes. 

His very Devil even is essentially Scotch, and nothing 
else, wholly unlike the Satan of ]Milton, or of any other 
poet. 

The Cotter's Saturday Xight was a home picture of 
his own father's family fireside; and it was at the 
Mauchline Church that the louse dared to set his foot 
upon the bonnet of the village belle. 

The Daisy sprang, and the Mouse built her nest, in 
the same field at his Mossgiel farm, and the Wounded 
Hare, that had many a time gamboled in confidence 
along his path, limped by him in his twilight musings 
along the banks of the Nith. 

Of the Twa Dogs, one was his own collie, and the 
other that of his father's landlord, the Laird of Doon- 
holm, whose insolent factor, after the Laird's death, by 
his threatening letters for arrears of rent, ''used to set 
them all in tears." 

Poor ]\Iailie, who died so piteously in the ditch, was 
a pet lamb he owned himself, and the auld mare I\Lag- 
gie, who received the New Year's Salutation, was a 
present from his own father at Kyle, and 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 95 

"When first I gaed to woo my Jenny, 
Ye then was trottin' wi' your minnie ;" 



and she it was who 



-Pranc'd w' muckle pride, 



When ye bure hame my bonnie bride," 

No, the classics were to Burns "a fountain shut up 
and a book sealed." He gave us golden apples indeed, 
but they were reared in the inaccessible domain of his 
own thought, and not in the garden of the Hesperides, 
where the fiery dragon keeps watch and ward. Am- 
brosia he had none, such as celestial lips tasted in the 
fabled days of yore, but, in abundance, haggis, " warm- 
reekin', rich, through whose pores the dews distil like 
amber bead." Nectar he had none, such as Hebe's 
hand bore sparkling to the gods, but we can '' take a 
cup of kindness yet" of the barley-bree, when 

" WiUie brew'd a peck o' maut," 

and can address guid auld Scotch drink, — 

" Whether thro' wimpHng worms thou jink, 
Or, richly brown, ream o'er the brink, 
In glorious faem," 

and when life grows weary, — 

" Oiled by thee. 
The wheels o' life go down hill, scrievin', 
Wi' rattlin' glee." 

Burns made his own Pantheon, and filled it with the 
most brilliant creations of his own mythology. He 
made the mountain-brooks and rivulets of his native 
land as famous as Helicon, where the Muses loved to 
dwell, or as Pactolus, that bore upon its tawny bosom 



96 ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

the freight and burden of its golden sands. He placed 
upon their beauteous banks nymphs as lovely as ever 
sported along Arcadian streams, and maids as sweet as 
ever arose from Paphian beds of roses, or Cytherean 
top-foam of the sea. He metamorphosed the nut-brown 
lassies of his own acquaintance into sylvan goddesses, 
and clothed them with all the fairy charms of Calypso, 
and decked them with all the queenly beauty of Aspasia. 
He peopled her mountain-dells, peaceful as Tempe's 
vale, with shepherds who could, as sweetly as the clas 
sic Corydon or the fabled Admetus, pipe upon their 
pastoral reeds their music to their flocks. 

And in Tam O'Shanter, the chef-cC oeiivre of his 
art, he breathed his spell of witchery over Alloway's 
auld haunted kirk, and it became as sacred as the 
temples and oracles of the gods. 

Burns prayed : 

" Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire ! 
My Muse, tho' hamely in attire, 
May touch the heart." 

He asked for one spark, and Nature lavished upon him 
a thousand-fold more favors than he craved. 

" By strong presumption driven, 
With sacrilegious hands, Prometheus stole 
Celestial fire, and bore it down from heaven." 

While Burns received his as a free gift, yet the same 
punishment seemed to follow them both. Burns, too, 
through life, was bound to the rock of Caucasus, and 
eagles gnawed his heart, which grew again faster than 
it was gnawed j and Nature, as a recompense for his 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 



97 



melancholy and his grief, let him have unlimited power 
to touch the human heart, and with Pandora's casket, 
gave to him, without measure, the fondest and most 
abiding hope. Burns was always a child, and, like 
Bacchus, perpetual youth hung about him forever. And 
Time, as it has handled the creations of his genius, has, 
like the burnishing-wheel of the lapidary upon the rough 
diamond, only displayed new splendors, as it has pre- 
sented to the ever-changing standpoints of each new age 
and generation since, the manifold and more gorgeous 
sides of the crystal. Yes, he was the child of Nature, 
and freely and fully she recognized the ties springing 
from the divine relation. He had the freedom of 
her star-born city. He was acknowledged as of her 
household, and to him were intrusted the keys to her 
innermost arcana. No Daphne fled at the approach of 
this Apollo. No Diana forbade him entrance ^ito the 
spotless purity of her chaste retreats. 

Nature's scene-painter, he was admitted into her 
secret studio, and had the free range of her easel, her 
choicest pencils and costliest colors. No wonder then 
that he painted always true to life without flattery, and 
in a tone of the most exquisite harmony. 

They tell us that the lips of the Theban statue of 
Memnon, when first touched by the rays of the rising 
sun, sent forth sweet and harmonious sounds, as if re- 
joicing at the coming of Aurora, the mother of the 
morn ; but that, at the setting of the sun, they sent 
forth a low and melancholy murmur, as if lamenting 
his mother's departure. But Burns, this living statue, 
sent forth his notes of melody not only when awakened 

I 7 



98 ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

by the beauty of the day, but on his lips there lingered 
lines of loveliness, even in the winter night, — 

" List'ning, the doors an' winnocks rattle, 
I thought him on the ourie cattle, ' 
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle 

O' winter war. 
And thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle, 

Beneath a scar." 

Nature, in her most prodigal beneficence, seemed 
anxious to lend to her darling all of her rarest beauties 
and daintiest charms. If he paints the morning, the 
purple streakings and the crimson flood-light are upon 
his palette, and the picture glows with all the blended 
hues of the streaming Orient, bathed in auroral radi- 
ance. If he paints the twilight, we feel spell-bound by 
its august silence, until he chooses to relieve us, as the 
thrush fends him her best evening-hymn; and, as //flows 
lullingly back upon the heart, like a dream of child- 
hood, we know hardly to whom to adjudge the palm, 
whether to the song of the bird or to the song of the 
poet, who seems more perfectly to echo its music. 

And when ''mild evening weeps over the lea," he 
flatters the gently, sweetly-gliding Afton, as it winds by 
the cottage where his Mary dwells, and its waters, Avhose 
purity the whitest houri would sully, lave her snowy 
feet in wantonness, as she stems its crystal wave, gath- 
ering as she goes the blowing primroses along its green 
braes. And when asleep by its murmuring stream, he 
charges the stockdoves and wild, whistling blackbirds 
to forbear their giddy songs, lest their echoes through 
the glen may awaken his "slumbering fair;" and he 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 



99 



promises the sweet river, as a meed, one of his own 
songs in its praise if it will only flow gently, and not 
disturb her tranquil dream. 

Whoever would, with our ''landlady' ' — Nature, grow 
''gracious, in favors, secret, sweet, and precious," must 
first love with equal and fond regard all of her multi- 
tudinous offspring, as her ever-varied panorama unfolds 
itself and moves majestically before us ; and thus the 
love of Burns for her, in all her moods, was beautiful 
and boundless. Coila, his Scottish muse, tells him in 
the Vision : 

" I saw thee seek the sounding shore, 
Delighted with the dashing roar ; 
Or, when the North his fleecy store 

Drove thro' the sky, 
I saw grim Nature's visage hoar 
Struck thy young eye. 

" Or, when the deep-green mantled Earth 
Warm cherish'd ev'ry flow'ret's birth, 
And joy and music pouring forth 

In ev'ry grove, 
I saw thee eye the gen'ral mirth 
With boundless love. 

" When ripen' d fields and azure skies, 
Call'd forth the reapers' rustling noise, 
I saw thee leave their evening joys 

And lonely stalk, 
To vent thy bosom's swelling rise 
In pensive walk." 

The monuments of his genius which he has reared 
himself will proclaim ever to the world his best and 
truest biography. His poems bear about them all 



loo Jinni^ESS ON BURNS. 

the freshness of the wild-wood, — all the fragrance of 
wild-wood flowers, — all the melody of wild-wood 
notes. 

We distinctly hear the evening thrush, while his mate 
sits nestling in the bush beside, singing unseen on Cess- 
nock's banks. 

We distinctly see, in all the vividness of photo- 
graphic beauty, his much-loved Ayr, — his hermit river, 
overhung with thickening green, kissing his pebbled 
shore as he gurgles by. 

We scent afresh the fragrant birks of Aberfeldy, and 
the hawthorn, hoary with its milk-white bloom, as they 
twine amorously around the raptured scene. 

We behold again, at every footfall, mountain-flowers 
upspringing in their wantonness, imploring to be em- 
braced ; and we listen again to the merry birds caroling 
their matin love on every spray. 

Memory murmurs once more of the Castle of Mont- 
gomery, and of the hallowed grove, where Summer first 
unfolds her robes, and where first he met his Highland 
Mary, to live one day of parting love, as the golden 
hours flew o'er them on angel-wings, and the plighted 
Sabbath vow, over the open Bible, by the flowing burn ; 
and remembrance brings back again, and with them, 
the lingering star with lessening ray, that loved to 
greet the early morn as it ushers in the anniversary of 
his Mary in heaven. 

Nature was Burns' s illustrious teacher of the poetic 
art, and it is to her ethereal inspiration that the world 
is indebted for his most magnificent creations, and thus 
we have 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. lOi 

" The simple Bard, rough at the rustic plough, 
Learning his tuneful trade from every bough ; 
The chanting linnet, or the mellow thrush. 
Hailing the setting sun, sweet in the green thorn bush, 
The soaring lark, the perching red-breast shrill. 
Or deep-ton'd plovers, gray, wild-whistling o'er the hill." 

Sweetly, indeed, did Burns acknowledge his debt to 
Nature for her loveliness and genial sympathy, and 
sweetly did he repay her by the lustrous coinage of his 
mind — the only coinage he could command — by that 
beautiful apostrophe : 

" O Nature ! a' thy shows an' forms, 
To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms ! 
Whether the Summer kindly warms, 

Wi' life an' light. 
Or Winter howls,' in gusty storms, 
The lang, dark night ! 

" Ev'n Winter bleak has charms to me. 
When winds rave thro' the naked tree ; 
Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree 

Are hoary gray ; 
Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee, 
Dark'ning the day !" 

The Lass of Ballochmyle, inspired by a chance meet- 
ing of the aristocratic Miss Alexander, is the perfection 
of poetic landscape painting. His very words become 
flesh and dwell among men. 

Burns, in his most exquisite letter to her, — a letter 
which of itself is one of his finest poems, — relates the 
circumstances under which it was composed, and re- 
quests permission to insert it in his next edition. He 
had roved out as chance directed, in the favorite haunts 
of his muse on the banks of the Ayr, to view nature in 



I02 ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

all the gayety of the vernal year. The evening sun was 
flaming over the distant western hills, and not a breath 
disturbed the crimson opening blossom, or the verdant 
spreading leaf. It was a golden moment for a poetic 
heart. He listened to the feathered warblers pouring 
out their harmony on every hand with a congenial 
kindred regard, and frequently turned out of his path, 
lest he should disturb their little songs, or frighten them 
to another station. He thought that he must be a wretch 
indeed who, regardless of their harmonious endeavor 
to please him, could eye their elusive flights to dis- 
cover their secret recesses, and to rob them of all the 
property Nature gives them, — their dearest comforts, — 
their helpless nestlings. Even the hoary hawthorn 
twig, that shot across his way (^what other heart, at such 
a time, could have been so interested in its welfare, 
wishing it preserved from the rudely browsing cattle, 
or the withering eastern blast?), he turns carefully 
aside. 
Yes, 

" 'Twas ev'n — the dewy fields were green, 

On ev'ry blade the pearls hang ; 
The zephyr wanton' d round the bean, 

And bore its fragrant sweets alang. 
In ev'ry glen the mavis sang, 

All nature llsfniiig seem' d the ivhile. 
Except where green wood echoes rang 

Amang the braes of Ballochmyle." 

Straying on a July evening in such a lovely scene, 
and musing along a lonely glade, he chanced to spy the 
Lass of Ballochmyle, and to his poetic eye, we wonder 
not that 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 1 03 

" Her look was like the morning's eye, 
Her air like Nature's vernal smile, 
Perfection whisper'd, passing by. 
Behold the lass of Ballochmyle !" 

As yet the Ploughman of Mossgiel was comparatively 
miknown to fame, and the haughty child of nobility 
disdained to answer the poet's request ; but when his 
star was in its zenith, she put the poem he had sent her 
in a costly frame, and hung it in her chamber, and the 
poor, sickly worldling owes to him her immortality in 
song. 

Well might we exclaim over her grave, as Alexander 
the conqueror did over a little mound at Sigseum, which 
doubt had fixed as the resting-place of Achilles, the 
hero of the Trojan war, ' ' Oh, fortunate youth ! who 
hast found in Homer a proclaimer of thy virtues : for 
surely, if this Iliad had not existed, the same tomb 
which conceals thy body would also have hidden thy 
fame." We repeat it, that Burns' s works are his best 
and truest autobiography. He rhymed his own life as 
he passed his pilgrimage on earth. His history affords 
no solution of the strange and secret springs of his 
character. He inherited nothing but a dauntless in- 
dependence and honest poverty. He sums up the whole 
of his eventful history in four short lines in the Brigs 
of Ayr : 

" Nursed in the peasant's lowly shed, 
To" hardy independence bravely bred, 
By early poverty to hardship steel'd, 
And train'd to arms in stern Misfortune's field." 

The philosophic inquirer who strives to read this 
great riddle of nature, without the aid of his own 



104 ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

oracular rhyme, is only repeating the fruitless task of 
Theseus endeavoring to extricate himself from the 
Cretan labyrinth without the silken clue of Ariadne. 

We must not overlook the influence of woman, which, 
in the formation of character, is universally acknowl- 
edged ; and we doubt if in the whole range of biogra- 
phy there can be found so remarkable an instance as 
the stern, skeptical qualities of the infant bard, moulded 
into a weirdlike superstition and awe by the credulous 
old woman, Janet Wilson. To the teachings, perhaps, 
of this old crone the world is indebted for the splen- 
dors of Tam O'Shanter, the Vision, the Address to the 
Deil, Halloween, Death and Dr. Hornbook, and many 
other of his unique fancies. Burns himself owned the 
debt he owed her, who, full of tales of ghosts and fairies, 
witches and warlocks, dead- lights, elf-candles, giants, 
dragons, and enchanted towers, on long winter nights, 
at the ingle-side, rehearsed them to Burns, and thus 
infused into his imagination the latent seeds of poesie. 

Nor must we overlook that next teacher in his ripen- 
ing manhood, — the beauteous harvest-girl, — '-his part- 
ner in the merry core," whose influence he confesses 
to the guid wife of Wauchope : 

" But still the elements o" sang, 
In formless jumble, right an' wrang, 

Wild floated in my brain ; 
Till on that har'st I said before, 
My partner in the merry core. 

She roused the forming strain : 
I see her yet, the sonsie quean, 

That lighted up her jingle, 
Her witching smile, her pauky een, 
That gart my heart-strings tingle." 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 



105 



In after-life, when Misfortune seemed to lay her 
heaviest hand on Burns, he composed most of his un- 
rivaled efforts. As new troubles pressed upon him, 
chasing them away with a new song, he seemed to bear 
them with ease, even as the arch of the sky at mid- 
night, when all the firmament twinkles with crystalline 
delight, bears its burden of starry beauty with the same 
ease as, in the dimness of summer twilight, when one 
opal vesper-star alone hangs in throbbing gleam above 
the horizon. 

To poetize appeared to give relief to his cares, and 
act as a panacea for all his melancholy. 

It was the song of the halcyon, rocking into slumber 
the stormy passions of the deep, and smoothing the fur- 
rows on the brow of the care-worn sea. In the Scotch 
Bard gone to the West Indies, we are told, that 

" The Muse was a' that he took pride in, 
That's owre the sea." 

He tells Dr. Moore, that ''my passions, when once 
lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they got vent 
in rhyme, and then conning over my verses, like a 
spell, soothed all into quiet." 

He tells Lapraik, an old Scotch bard, that — 

" Whene'er my Muse does on me glance, 
I jingle at her." 

To his old comrade, Simpson of Ochiltree, he says : 

"Yet when a tale comes i' my head, 
Or lasses gie my heart a screed, 
As whyles they're like to be my dead, 
(Oh, sad disease !) 
I kittle up my rustic reed, — 
It gies me ease." 



Io6 ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

The Brigs of Ayr he wrote ''by whim inspired, and 
haply prest wi' care." 

It seemed to unburden him of grief, and put his mind 
in "fine frenzy rolling," to have only his solitary mus- 
ings in his favorite haunts of Nature; and, as he him- 
self says :- 

" The Muse, nae poet ever fand her, 
Till by himsel he learn'd to wander 
Adown some trotting burn's meander, 

An' no think lang ; 
O, sweet to stray an' pensive ponder 

A heart-felt sang!" 

It is said by Macaulay, in speaking of Percy Bysshe 
Shelley, the magic rhymer of mythic verse, that the 
power of personification is the strongest sign of a mind 
truly poetical, and is the highest quality of the great 
ancient masters of the Muse. If this be so, who, then, 
shall dispute the palm or contest the laurels with the 
peerless Burns ? What shall we say to the inspiration 
of the bard, who, holding his plough, and driving his 
favorite mare, Jenny Geddes, on a bright April morn- 
ing in the field of Mossgiel, stopped and stooped to con- 
verse with the mountain-daisy, which he turned over 
with his plough and crushed? He endows the ''wee 
modest crimson-tipped flower" with life and the di- 
vinest qualities of humanity, and, with all the delicacy 
and bashfulness of a first love, addresses her as an artless 
maiden, — a sweet floweret of the rural shade. He de- 
plores the evil hour in which they met, and regrets his 
inability to spare the " bonnie gem. ' ' He warns her of 
the hopelessness of her fate, and reminds her that it is not 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 



107 



her sweet neighbor and companion meet, — the merry- 
lark, blithely springing upward to greet the ''purpling 
east" with his matin hymn, who now bows and bathes 
her for the moment in the dew, to spring up again 
when the lark rises in the sky, but that she is crushed 
forever. He laments the cauld, bitter, biting north 
wind which blew upon her early and lowly birth, and 
commends the cheerfulness with which she still peeped 
forth amid the storm, and the humility which permitted 
her scarcely to raise her tender form above the parent 
Earth. He compares, with the flaunting flowers of cul- 
ture, her, in her scanty mantle clad, and her ''snawie 
bosom" open to the first rays of the rising sun, reared 
with no fostering care, with only the random shelter 
of clod or stone, adorning unseen and alone a ''histie 
stibble-field," lifting her unassuming head in humble 
guise, not soliciting even the admiration of the rustic 
ploughman's advances. 

Though in a far different vein, what finer personifi- 
cation can be found than the Brigs of Ayr ? It is the 
ancient times brought in contact and comparison with 
the modern. It is old age brought face to face with 
youth. The auld brig, like an old man standing in all 
the dignity of dotage, indulges in Nestorian boasts of 
*'auld lang syne," and believing that nothing now can 
compare with the days of old, laments the sad degen- 
eracy of the times, while the new, unfinished brig, with 
all the vanity and pomp of inexperienced youth, under- 
rates and mocks at the generation which had lived 
before him. ''Rapt in meditation high," Burns wan- 
dered out when 



lo8 ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

" The drowsy Dungeon-clock had number'd two, 
And Wallace Tow'r had sworn the fact was true : 
The tide-swoln Firth, with sullen sounding roar. 
Through the still night dash'd hoarse along the shore. 
All else was hush'd as Nature's closed e'e, 
The silent moon shone high o'er tow'r and tree : 
The chilly frost, beneath the silver beam, 
Crept, gently-crusting, o'er the glittering stream." 

Two dusky forms, the spirits which preside over the 
two bridges, dart through the midnight air. The one, 
with "vera wrinkles Gothic in his face," takes his 
station on the auld brig, and the other, "buskit in a 
braw new coat, w' virls an' whirlygigums at the head," 
flutters on the rising press of the new brig. While the 
old sprite was "spying the time-worn flaws in every 
arch," it chanced his new-come neighbor took his eye, 
and relying on the right which he supposed his fullness 
of years gave him, he admonishes his young friend to 
beware of conceit : 

" I doubt na, frien', ye'll think ye're nae sheepshank, 
Ance ye were streekit o'er frae bank to bank, 
But gin ye be a Brig as auld as me, — 
Tho" faith, that day I doubt ye'll never see, — 
There'll be, if that date come, I'll wad a boddle, 
Some fewer whigmeleeries in your noddle." 

The new bridge, with contemptuous disdain, rejects 
the goodly counsels of old age, and rallies the rude old 
Vandal on his lack both of good manners and good 
sense : 

" Will your poor, narrow footpath of a street, — 
Where twa wheelbarrows tremble when they meet, — 
Your ruin'd, formless bulk o' stane an' lime, 
Compare wi' bonnie Brigs o' modern time ? 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 109 

There's men o' taste would tak the Duckat-stream, 
Though they should cast the very sark and swim, 
Ere they would grate their feelings wi' the view 
O' sic an ugly Gothic hulk as you !" 

Full of resentment and bitter satire, the old brig 
replies : 

" Conceited gowk ! pufiF'd up wi' windy pride ! 
This mony a year I've stood the flood an' tide; 
An' the' wi' crazy eild I'm sair forfairn, 
I'll be a Brig when ye're a shapeless cairn ! 
As yet ye little ken about the matter, 
But twa-three winters will inform you better. 

^f ^ a; J^ -;ji -;:;- .;:;- ^ 

Then down ye'll hurl — deil nor ye never rise ! 
And dash the gumlie jaups up to the pouring skies, 
A lesson sadly teaching, to your cost, 
That Architecture's noble art is lost !" 

The new bridge derides all the beauties of the Gothic 
order, and stigmatizes them as 

" Forms like some bedlam statuary's dream, 
The craz'd creations of misguided whim ; 
Forms might be worshipp'd on the bended knee, 
And still the second dread command be free, — 
Their likeness is not found on earth, in air, or sea." 

The old brig indignantly exclaims : 

"A' ye douce folk I've borne aboon the broo. 
Were ye but here, what would ye say or do ! 
How would your spirits groan in deep vexation, 
To see each melancholy alteration; 
And agonizing, curse the time and place 
"WTien ye begat the base, degen'rate race!" 

By a masterly stroke of genius, Burns puts an end to 
this lifelike colloquy by introducing a fairy-band, and 
K 



no jiDDI^ESS ON BUR.VS. 

"Adown the glittering stream they featly danced; 
Bright to the moon their various dresses glanced : 
They footed o'er the wat'ry glass so neat, 
The infant-ice scarce bent beneath their feet ; 
While arts of minstrelsy among them rung, 
And soul-ennobling bards heroic ditties sung. 

Harmonious concert rung in every part, 

While simple melody poured moving on the heart." 

For fine personification, what can exceed the Hum- 
ble Petition of Bruar-Water to the Duke of Athole? 
Her highest wish is that her noble master will shade 
her banks with ''towering trees" and " bonnie spread- 
ing bushes. ' ' She pleads for lofty firs and ashes cool 
to overspread her lowly banks, and fragrant birches, 
drest in woodbines, to adorn her craggy cliffs, never 
forgetting the close-embowering thorn for the nest for 
the little songster. Ostensibly, she pleads in behalf of 
the 'Mightly-jumpin' glowrin trouts, that through the 
waters play;" but somewhat for her own benefit, sug- 
gesting that if she had been in her pristine glory, she 
would have been kneeled to and adored by Burns, 
whom she was ashamed to meet " wi' half her chan- 
nel dry." She promises the noble duke that he will 
be doubly delighted, as he wanders on her banks, and 
that even the grateful birds will return him their thanks 
in songs. She desires such place as may be a covert to 
shield the "sober lavrock and the pensive robin from 
the storm, and where even the coward maukin may 
securely sleep." She desires such place as the shepherd 
may choose for his seat, where he shall weave his crown 
of flowers, and where the loving pair may meet by 
sweet, endearing stealth, as 



ADDRESS O.V BURNS. m 

" The flowers shall vie in all their charms 
The hour of heaven to grace, 
And birks extend their fragrant arms 
To screen the dear embrace," 

The eagle eye of Burns grasped the most minute 
features of the landscape. The most trifling thing 
claimed his attention, and found itself daguerreotyped 
in the group, standing alongside the loftier and grander 
objects of earth and sea and sky. 

He closes in splendor the stormy winter-day; but in 
the background stands out in bold relief 

" An' hunger' d maukin ta'en her way 
To kail-yards green, 
While faithless snaws ilk step betray 
Where she has been." 

He beholds the dense forest bending to the breeze ; 
but the rosebud is not forgotten, and 

" Within the bush, her covert nest, 
A httle linnet fondly prest ; 
The dew sat chilly on her breast 
Sae early in the morning," 

Burns respected not only the rights of his fellow- 
men, but had a kindred regard for every living thing, 
and by the truest figures humanized the whole animal 
creation.- He could never ''hear the loud, solitary 
whistle of the curlew in a summer morn, or the wild, 
mixing cadence of a troop of gray plover in an au- 
tumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul, 
like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry." In one 
of his Highland tours, he sought the solitude of Loch 
Turit, a wild lake secluded in the recesses of the hills. 



112 - ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

and his approach frightened some water-fowl, to whom 
human footfall was not familiar. He addresses them, 
indulging in his favorite idea of " Nature's Social 
Union :" 

" Why, ye tenants of the lake, 
For me your wat'ry haunt forsake ? 
Tell me, fellow-creatures, why 
At my presence thus you fly ? 
Why disturb your social joys, 
Parent, filial kindred ties ? 
Common friend to you and me, 
Nature's gifts to all are free !" 

Now he gives them an assurance of their safety : 

" Peaceful keep your dimpling wave, 
Busy feed, or wanton lave. 
Or, beneath the shelt'ring rock, 
Bide the surging billow's shock." 

Now he instructs them in the spirit of haughty inde- 
pendence which he himself loved so much, and never 
forsook : 

" Or, if man's superior might 
Dare invade your native right. 
On the lofty ether borne 
Man with all his powers you scorn ; 
Swiftly seek, on clanging wings, 
Other lakes and other springs. 
And the foe you cannot brave. 
Scorn at least to be his slave." 

In the same strain of sweetness does he hail the 
mouse and her nest which he turned up while plough- 
ing in the stubble-field of Mossgiel. 

Blane, his gadsman, chased it with the plough- 
spade. Burns rebuked him, inquiring, What harm 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 



113 



has the poor mouse done you? Nothing in our lan- 
guage can equal this question, in poetical refinement, 
unless it be Uncle Toby's fly at the dinner-table. In 
the night Burns awoke Blane, who slept with the bard, 
and reciting the poem, asked him, "What think you 
of our mouse now?" How sensitively he seeks to 
quiet the fears of the fugitive ! 

"Wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie ! 
Oh ! what a panic's in thy breastie ! 
Thou need nae start awa sae hasty, 
Wi' bickerin' brattle : 
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee, 

Wi' murd'ringpattle," 

How beautifully he teaches equality, by descending 
from the highest heights of manhood down to the level 
of one of God's most insignificant creatures, and with 
open generosity recognizing its right to life ! 

" I truly sorrow man's dominion 
Has broken Nature's soci^ union, 
An' justifies that ill opinion 

Which maks thee startle 
At me, thy poor earth-born companion, 
An' fellow-mortal ! 

" I doubt na, whyles but thou may thieve. 
What then ? poor beastie, thou maun live ! 
A daimen-icker in a thrave 
'S a sma' request : 
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave, 
And never miss 't." 

With what piteous sympathy he lament; its tiny 
mimic m isfortunes ! 

K* 8 



114 ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

" Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin ! 
Its silly wa's the wins are strewin ! 
An' naething, now , to big a new ane, 

O foggage green, 
An' bleak December wins ensuin", 
Baith snell and keen. 



•' That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble 
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble ! 
Now thou'st turned out for a' thy trouble, 

But house or hald, 
To thole the winter's sleety dribble. 

An' cranreuch cauld." 

Then how touchingly he moralizes on the vanity of 
all foresight not divine, and furnishes an argument to 
satisfy even tlie mouse, and reconcile it to its fate ! 

" But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane, 
In proving foresight may be vain : 
The best-laid scheme o' mice an men, 

Gang aft a-gley. 
An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain, 
For promis'd joy. 

" Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me ! 
The present only toucheth thee ; 
But, och ! I backward cast my e'e 

On prospects drear ! 
An' forward, tho' I canna see, 

1 guess an' fear." 

Burns's love and sympathy were as wide as the uni- 
verse itself, and wrapped in their generous fold the evil 
and the good. As ''one night the storm the steeples 
rocked," he sees 



"5 



And, 
he sees, 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

" How pamper'd luxury, flatt'ry by her side, 

The parasite empoisoning her ear, 

With all the servile wretches, in the rear, 
Look o'er provid property, extended wide, 

And eyes the simple rustic hind, 
Whose toil upholds the glitt'ring show, 

A creature of another kind. 

Some coarser substance, unrefin'd, 
Plac'd for her lordly use thus far, thus vile, below." 

" Wliile thro' the ragged roof and chinky wall. 
Chill o'er his slumbers piles the drifty heap," 

" Thro' all his works abroad. 

The heart, benevolent and kind, 
The most resembles God." 

" He wadna wrang'd the vera Deil, 
That's owre the sea." 

And in his address, his parting counsel to Auld 
Hornie is his ultimate reformation : 

" But, fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben! 
O, wad ye tak a thought an' men ! 
Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken — 

Still hae a stake — 
I'm wae to think upo' your den, 
E'enforyoicr sake," 

No place was secure from the scathing humor of 
Burns. He sees a louse on the bonnet of a fine lady 
at Mauchline Church. He chides its discontent unless 
at the topmost height of the bonnet ; yet how kindly 
he rebukes it for its impudence ! He had not the heart 
to deprive even it of its dinner if it would only seek it 
"on some poor body," and gives it a permit to "in 



Il6 ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

some beggar's haffet squattle." Fearing that he had 
been too rough in his rebuke, he stops to apologize : 

" I wad na been surpris'd to spy 
You on an auld wife's flainen toy, 
Or aiblins some bit duddie boy 
On's wyliecoat." 

Then, with a reproof to pride and vanity, he warns 
the dame: 

" Oh, Jenny, dinna toss your head, 
An' set your beauties a' abread ! 
Ye little ken what cursed speed 
The beastie's makin'." 

And concludes with the magnificent moral : 

" Oh, wad some Pow'r the giftie gie tis. 
To see oursels as ithers see us !" 

The versatile genius of Burns is unrivaled and mar- 
velous. He leaped from precipice to peak with all the 
agility of the chamois of the Alps. He would quit the 
terrible companionship of dashing cataracts and roaring 
tempests, to him ''delightful as the raptured thrill of 
joy," to converse with the thistle that sprung at his 
feet, or the dewdrop that glittered on the milk-white 
thorn. He extols, with one breath, in words that burn, 
the prowess of the Highland clans on the battle-field 
of Sheriff-muir, and can 

" tell, how pell and mell, 



By red claymores, and muskets' knell, 
Wi' dying yell, the Tories fell, 
And Whigs to hell did flee, man !" 

and in the next breath, he turns, in tenderness, to 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 



117 



the wounded hare that limps by him, — sings to it his 
sorrow: how he should miss it sporting "at sober eve 
and cheerful morn" over the dewy lawn of Ellisland, — 
wishing to the "poor wanderer of the wood and field," 
"the bitter little that of life remained," and uttering 
a withering curse on the barbarous art of the slayer : 

" May never pity soothe thee with a sigh, 
Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart 1" 

He treated Death and the Devil with equal levity 
and nonchalance. He meets Death with his scythe on 
his shoulder, and, taking him for a harvest hand re- 
turning home, encounters him with a salute, and a most 
comical inquiry : 

" Guid e'en, Friend ! hae ye been mawin', 
When ither folk are busy sawin' ?" 

He meets the Devil, "ayont the lough," with the 
assurance, 

" An' now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin' 
A certain bardie's rantin, drinkin, 
Some luckless hour will send him linkin 

To your black pit ; 
But, faith ! he'll turn a corner, jinkin, 
An' cheat you yet," 

In Holy Willie's prayer, in searing sarcasm, he scathes 
the Pharisaical hypocrisy of the times; but in the tomb 
all malice must be buried, and so he writes his epitaph. 
He implores his " brunstane devilship" to " haud his 
nine-cat tail awee," and though 

" Justice, alas! has gien him o'er, 
And mercy's day is gaen," 



Il8 ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

Burns still appeals to the pride and reputation of his 
Satanic Majesty, devoid of pity tho' he be, to award 
to Holy Willie the benefit of both justice and mercy, 
in those exquisite lines : 

" But hear me, Sir Deil as ye are, 
Look something to your credit, 
A coof like him wad stain your name, 
If it were kent ye did it." 

He salutes his auld mare Maggie on the New 
Year's morning as he would address a fellow-being, in 
familiar and flattering colloquy, — then turns to bewail 
Mailie's death, and paints the virtues of his pet ewe, 
and gives vent to his grief in an elegy, not excelled 
by that of Grecian Moschus on the death of Bion. 

Who, like Burns, in John Anderson, could sing the 
never-fading affection of the wife, — strong, and long 
as life itself? When they were first acquent in youth, 
her guidman's locks were like the raven. Then they 
commenced the joyous journey of life, and pursued 
together the devious perils of its path. They reached 
the summit in middle age, and then, with trembling 
steps, but with strengthening love, blessings showering 
ever on the locks of snow, they totter down the smooth 
but rapid declivity of life's hill to the same grave which 
embraces them in its bosom of rest: 

"John Anderson, my jo, John, 

We clamb the hill thegither ; 
And mony a canty day, John, 

We've had wi' ane anither : 
Now we maun totter down, John, 

But hand in hand we'll go, 
And sleep thegither at the foot, 

John Anderson, my jo." 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 



119 



Loyalty, and love of country and love of home, are 
leading features in every true Scotsman's character, as 
ineradicable in his heart as the emblem of his native 
land is in his native soil ; and proverbial as this is, 
every Scotsman, for glowing patriotism, gracefully 
yields the palm to the heroic Robert Burns, as he re- 
members when 

" The rough burr-thistle, spreading wide, 
Amang the bearded bear, 
He turn'd the weeder-clips aside. 
An' spared the symbol dear." 

Who learned the Scot to revel in the pride of the 
prowess of his country's arms at Sheriff-muir and 
Waterloo, Balaklava and the heights of Inkerman, and 
charged him 

" But mark the rustic, haggis-fed, 
The trembling earth resounds his tread ; 
Clap in his walie nieve a blade. 

He'll mak it whissle. 
An' legs, an' arms, an' heads will sned, 

Like taps o' thrissle" ? 

Who taught the Scot to 

" sing auld Coila's plains an' 'ells. 

Her moors red-brown wi' heather bells, 
Her banks and braes, her dens an' dells. 

Where glorious Wallace, 
Aft bure the gree, as story tells, 
Frae southron billies. 

"At Wallace's name, what Scottish blood 
But boils up in a spring-tide jflood ! 
Oft have our fearless fathers strode 

By Wallace's side, 
Still pressing onward, red-wat shod, 
Or glorious died " ? 



120 ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

What Scot can ever whisper the lingering farewell to 
the hills and dales and heathy moors of his native land 
without remembering ''The gloomy night is gathering 
fast," or forget the earnest desire he cherished in his 
boyhood ? 

" E'en then, a wish, I mind its pow'r, 
A wish that to my latest hour 

Shall strongly heave my breast, 
That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, 
Some usefu' plan or book could make, 
Or sing a sang at least." 

And who shall say that this burning wish to make 
for Scotland a heroic song worthy of her renown, has 
not been most gloriously realized ? 

Who shall say that he has not given a battle-ode that 
makes the blood run wild, such as no other age or clime 
can boast ? 

And who of the whole British race, till freedom's 
cause and Bannockburn shall have passed away together 
from the memory of men, will not ask the Scot to 
share with him in the glory of liberty's wildest and 
loftiest anthem, — storm-born in the wilds of Galloway, 
and fit only to be hymned by heroes in the triumph of 
the battle-storm? 

" Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, 
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led ; 
Welcome to your gory bed. 
Or to victorie!" 

With plastic hand Burns moulded the national heart 
and refined the national intellect, impressing each with 
the enduring stamp of his own immortal genius. 

A thousand cotter's Saturday nights had closed in 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. I2i 

prosaic monotony over the lowly peasant homes of 
Scotland, but it was reserved for Burns to draw such a 
living picture of rural life as ennobled the very hovels 
of the poor. It was reserved for him to "gild the 
gloom," and shed over them a halo of beguiling glory, 
which made the weary rustic quite forget the drudgery 
of his toil. A thousand Hallowe'ens had been held, 
but it was reserved for Burns to embody the glamour 
and the awe of those light superstitions into weird verse 
for the refinement of the lads and lassies of the land. 

Burns' s mission upon earth embraced the elevation 
of the humble, by transforming his rank into one of 
enviable majesty, and by inspiring him with lofty and 
exalting sentiments of his own dignity and independ- 
ence. Like AntEeus, the fabled giant, who wrestled 
with Hercules, and when thrown, renewed his strength 
each time he touched his mother Earth, so Robert 
Burns infused into the heart of the hind new vigor 
and new hope, by throwing over the most desolate 
wastes of Scotland all the fascination and enchantment 
of Oriental climes. 

In that splendid dirge, " Man was made to mourn," 
how unostentatiously he suggests the doubt : 

" If I'm design'd yon iordling's slave, — 
By Nature's law designed, — 
Why was an independent wish 
E'er planted in my mind ?" 

Having awakened the daring doubt, and fearing the 
effect of discontent, he reconciles him to his lot by the 
firm assurance that 
L 



122 ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

" The poor, oppressed, honest man 
Had never, sure, been born, 
Had there not been some recompense 
To comfort those that mourn!" 

And then by a bold dash he frees Nature from the 
charge, for it is 

" Mail s inhumanity to man 
Makes countless thousands mourn." 

What can surpass the vindication of equality and inde- 
pendence in "A man's a man for a' that " ? 

" Is there for honest poverty. 

That hangs his head, and a" that ? 
The coward slave, we pass him by, 

We dare be poor for a' that ! 
For a' that, and a' that, 

Our toil's obscure, and a' that ; 
The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
The man's the gowd for a' that !" 

And so Burns embellishes every condition of life 
with his golden fancy, and decorates the very lowest 
with the gleamings of poetic splendor, mindful even 
to paint the haggis of the poor superior to the rarest 
ragouts of the rich. In the Twa Dogs, that ironical 
impersonation of poverty and wealth, Luath, the plough- 
man's pet, barks for joy with the merry children of 
the poor; while Caesar, the aristocratic collie, warns 
his playmate of his error, in supposing that t'le life of 
the gentry is a life of true pleasure, reminding Luath that 

"A country fellow at the plough, 
His acres till'n, he's right eneugh; 
A country girl at her wheel, 
Her dizzcn's done, she's unco weel : 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

But Gentlemen, and Ladies warst, 
Wi' ev'n-down want o' wark are curst." 



123 



In all his life-struggles, Burns never found -fault with 
his fellow-men, nor grumbled at his fate. Coila had 
taught him: 

" Then never murmur nor repine; 
Strive in thy humble sphere to shine : 
Preserve the Dignity of Man, 

With soul erect ; 
And trust, the Universal Plan 

Will all protect." 

This is no Byronic gloom: there is no Byronic pa- 
rading of his griefs, but he laughs himself at his own 
humble calling, and satirizes it in the^'Deil cam' 
fiddling through the town, and danced awa' wi' the 
exciseman." 

In the depths of his misfortunes, Burns delicately 
chides his native river, along whose romantic banks 
and hill-slopes he had so often in childhood strayed to 
see the rose and woodbine twine, and sweetly reproves 
the warbling birds that flitted through the blossoming 
thorn for bringing back to his memory "departed joys, 
departed never to return:" 

" Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon, 
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair? 
How can ye chant, ye little birds, 
And I sae weary, fu' o' care?" 

He wonders why they can be so happy and he so sad, 
and piteously craves their sympathy and a return of 
gratitude, to which he thought himself so well entitled. 
To his bonnie Doon, both in its most gorgeous and 
most desolate moments, he had poured out his most 



124 ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

melodious roundelay, and with ''ilka bird," he had 
fraternized, both when it caroled to its mate, as the 
springtime laughed in flowers, and in the winter night, 
when he pities their helpless lot, in those lines of beauty 
never to be forgotten : 

" Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, 
That in the merry months o' spring 
Delighted me to hear thee sing, 

What comes o' thee? 
Where wilt thou cow'r thy chitt'ring wing, 

An' close thy e'e?" 

Sad was the spectacle of Burns's declining years ; Fate 
denied to him in his lowly Dumfries home "all blest 
retirement, all retreat from cares." 

It was not for him to realize that fine conception of 
Goldsmith : 

" How blessed is he who crowns in shades like these, 
A youth of labor with an age of ease !" 

Nor even of that finer one of his own : 

"As the shades of evening close, 
Beck'ning thee to long repose ; 
As life itself becomes disease, 
Seek the chimney-neuk of ease." 

Pitiable was it to see him passing to and fro, a stranger, 
unrecognized, through the streets of Dumfries. 

With the aged bard in Glencairn's Lament, he seemed 
to be crooning to himself: 

" I've seen sae monie changefu' years, 

On earth I am a stranger grown ; 
I wander in the ways of men, 

Alike unknowing and unknown : 
Unheard, unpitied, unrelieved, 
1 1 are alane my lade o' care." 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 



125 



No, earnest and sincere Burns, though neglected by 
your own, succeeding periods will not forget you : 

" Like the vase in which roses have long been distilled, 
You may break, you may shatter, the vase if you will. 
But the scent of the roses will cling round it still." 

An appeal to posterity will not be in vain. Towns 
will become famous for your birth- and burial-place, 
even as the seven cities of Greece contended for the 
birthplace of the blind old man of Scio, — 

" Till the Future dares 
Forget the Past, your fate and fame shall be 
An echo and a light unto Eternity." 

Scotsmen everywhere, claiming kindred with your 
refulgent name, with pride and gratitude to you, the 
patron of the glory of their fatherland, will through- 
out all time, in paraphrase, exclaim, as you exclaimed 
of the patron of the friendless bard : 

"The bridegroom may forget the bride 

Was made his wedded wife yestreen ; 
The monarch may forget the crown 

That on his head an hour has been ; * 
The mother may forget the child 

That smiles sae sweetly on her knee, 
But I'll remember Robert Burns 

And a' that he has done for me." 

The slave who washes the sands of Golconda for the 
''gem of purest ray serene," obtains his freedom upon 
the discovery of a brilliant of singular and astonishing 
beauty; but Burns, born a freeman, breathing the free 
mountain-air of Scotland, became a slave, and died 
almost a pauper, because he brought forth gems of such 
L* 



126 A DDR ESS ON B URNS. 

rare beauty, that in the appreciation, the world lost 
sight almost entirely of the generous bestower. 

Scotland had for this world-wonder no fitter avoca- 
tion than stamping leather, granting transport licenses 
for spirits, counting the excise due on tallow-candles, 
gauging malt-vats, and quarreling with auld ale-wives 
and smugglers. 

The curtain rises once more, and this marvelous 
drama must close. Robert Burns must die ! As he 
lay upon his white death-bed, neglected by the world, 
whose memory he has wooed and won, dying in pov- 
erty amid the deathless beauties which had cost him so 
much to create, and which he had freely given as a 
largess to the wondering times, ''chill penury could 
not repress his noble rage, or freeze the genial current 
of his soul." 

The gentle girlish Jessie Lewars, — a sister of a com- 
rade in the excise, who watched over him and soothed 
his dying moments, he could not repay in the base coin 
of the world. He was too poor. 

Through the weary vigils of the languid night she 
keeps steadfast look upon the waning bard, and sees that 

" in the silken fringes of his faint eyes, 

Lilve dew upon a sleeping flower, tliere lies 

A tear some dream has loosened from his brain," 

and then escaped like incense from the heart those last 
earnest words of tribute: 

" Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, 
And soft as their parting tear, Jessie." 

And the gentle watcher was amply repaid by an im- 
mortality in song. 



ADDRESS ON B URNS. 127 

He received iin terrified the Pale Horse and his rider. 
When death came at last, he found Robert Burns the 
same sportive, jocund being as when first they met on 
that signal night when 

" The rising moon began to glow'r 
The distant Cumnock hills out-owre ; 
To count her horns, wi' a' my power, 

I set mysel, 
But whether she had three or four, 

I could na tell." 

He met Death with the same ease and familiarity and 
self-possession as he had eleven years before : 

" I was come round about the hill 
An' todlin' down on Willie's mill. 
Setting my staff wi' a' my skill 

To keep me sicker. 
Tho' leeward whyles, against my will, 
I took a bicker." 

And he joked with Death as freely now, as then he 
did about the pedantic Jock Hornbook. 

A few days before his death he asks the lady in Brow, 
in Annandale, with whom he dined, "Well, madam, 
have you any commands for the other world?" And 
on his death-bed he turned to John Gibson, a comrade 
in the Dumfries Volunteers, who stood by his side wn"th 
wet eyes, and, with a gleam of humor on his face, said, 
'•'John, pray don't let the awkward-squad fire over 
me." 

The 2ist day of July, 1796, dawned upon the world 
with the loss of one whose place future ages will strive 
long and hard to fill. It was beautiful, that he who was 
born amid the storm, and whose bark was tempest-tossed 



128 ADDRESS ox BURNS. 

through life, should close his voyage in the sublime 
stillness of the placid morn. 

And Robert Burns has at last '^ awakened from his 
dream of life." He has passed away, and is ''gathered 
with the Kings of Thought." 

" To that high capital, where kingly Death 
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, 
He came^ and bought with price of purest breath 
A grave among the Eternal." 

They laid him pompously in state in the town hall of 
old Dumfries. 

The Gentlemen Volunteers, and the Fencible In- 
fantry of Angusshire, and a regiment of cavalry of the 
Cinque Ports, bore to the churchyard of St. Michaels 
his cofdn, on which was placed his hat and sword, 
amid the chimes of funeral bells, the glitter of arms, 
and nodding plumes, and sad hearts, and sad steps, 
keeping time to the Dead March in Saul. The pageant 
has passed ; and dust co dust, ashes to ashes, and three 
volleys over bis grave, conclude this solemn and august 
drama. "We are such stuff as dreams are made of, 
and our little life is rounded with a sleep." It was a 
funeral fitting for a knight, but somehow we miss the 
mystic deiseal of the brethren of St. James's Lodge, 
and the casting of their green gifts into the narrow 
house of one who, "oft honored with supreme com- 
mand, presided o'er the sons of light;" yet we forget 
not that his symbol of immortality was elsewhere, nor 
that the stone which the builders rejected, not knowing 
its use, had become the copestone in the Temple of 
Fame. 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 129 

Such burial was fitting for the rustic urchin who, 
fired by the reading of the lives of Hannibal and Wal- 
lace in boyhood, strutted in raptures up and down after 
the recruiting drum and bagpipes, and wished himself 
tall enough to be a soldier. Such burial was fitting for 
him who, in manhood, knelt in veneration, and kissed 
in devout fervor the broad flagstone which marked the 
resting-place of Bruce of Bannockburn. Such burial 
was fitting for him who, from an old lady of ninety, a 
lineal descendant of that race which gave to the Scot- 
tish throne its brightest ornament, received the honor 
of knighthood by the aid of the helmet and two-handed 
broadsword of her great ancestor. Such burial was 
earned by him, who gave to his native land a battle- 
ode which makes all tyrants tremble. Such burial was 
earned by the long hours of anguish, and the troublous 
visions of a dungeon on his death-bed, which his uniform 
in the Dumfries Volunteers cost him, in his last letter, 
imploring his patron, Thompson, for five pounds to pay 
for the cloth to Williamson, the wretched draper, who 
had procured a capias for the emaciated body of the 
dying poet, imploring, not as a gratuity indeed, but 
promising Thompson, upon return of health, five pounds' 
worth of song-genius, the neatest he had seen, — a prom- 
ise he lived not to redeem. Not redeemed, did I say? 
— not redeemed as Burns intended, but doubly redeemed 
by the last fragment he ever wrote : 

" Fairest maid on Devon banks, 
Crystal Devon, winding Devon." 

And now the curtain has dropped, and one duty only 

9 



130 



ADDRESS OX BURNS. 



remains to be discharged. Let the world throw over 
the follies and shortcomings of Burns the broad man- 
tle of charity; for, like the pastor in the Deserted 
Village, 

" Even his failings leaned to wtue's side." 

Let us ever remember that when the chosen one of 
that light, aerial band, sent by the Genius of his native 
land to bind the holly on his majestic brow, with the 
solemn injunction, " Wear thou this,'''' she foresaw 

" His pulse's maddening play, 
Wild send him pleasure's de\-ious way, 
Misled by Fancy's meteor ray, 

By passion driven ; 
But yet the light that led astray. 

Was light from Heaven." 

The curse was given with the gift. 

Let us never forget to give him the advantage of his 
own plea in Unco Guid, in those master-stanzas of 
more than apostolic charity: 

" Then gently scan your brother man, 

Still gentler sister woman ; 
Tho' they may gang a kenning wrang, 

To step aside is human : 
One point must still be greatly dark. 

The moving lohy they do it : 
And just as lamely can ye mark 

How far perhaps they rue it. 

" Who made the heart, 'tis He alone. 
Decidedly can try us ; 
He knows each chord, — its various tone. 
Each spring, — its various bias : 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 131 

Then at the balance let's be mute, 

We never can adjust it; 
What's done we partly may compute, 

But know not what's resisted." 

Let us only regret that it was not reserved for Burns 
to obey the behests of the Beadsman of Nithside to the 
stranger at the Friar's-Carse Hermitage : 

" Let prudence bless enjoyment's cup, 
Then raptur'd sip, and sip it up." 

The want of an object in life, well defined and well 
pursued, is the key-note to all of Burns' s failures. 

If Burns lacked aim in life, still the bow was bent 
with earnest and manly vigor by the stalwart arm of the 
Belvidere Apollo. If Burns lacked aim in life, still, like 
the aged Acestes in Virgil, he hurled his swift arrow into 
the very empyrean of Poetry. True, the arrow burned 
and consumed itself, but it marked in its burning a 
transcendentally brilliant pathway of light in the 
heavens, a star of the first magnitude unfixed from its 
sphere, shooting wildly and grandly athwart the quiet 
sky, but blazing and blessing throughout all coming 
time. 

Still to the last, Robert Burns never compromised 
his own self-respecti, nor felt his manhood abased in his 
own esteem. Still to the last, his life-wish was fulfilled 
and honor crowned the statue of Robert Burns's integ- 
rity. Whether on the smuggling coast, learning sur- 
veying and dialing at Kirkoswold school, or at Irvine 
learning the flax-dresser's trade, — the shop on fire, 
while they gave the New Year a welcome carousal ; 
whether on the road to Greenock with his chest, flee- 



132 ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

ing in a voyage to the West Indies, with his farewell 
song to Scotland already sung, and '' with the merciless 
pack of the law at his heels ;" whether, without a single 
acquaintance or letter of introduction, making, on a 
borrowed pony, a triumphal entry into Edinburgh, 
and enjoying among her savans and nobles a reception 
unparalleled in history, unless, indeed, when Voltaire, 
in extreme age, was crowned and smothered with roses 
in the theatre of Paris ; whether unprofitably following 
the plough at Mossgiel or Lochlea, or playing exciseman 
at fifty pounds a year, and ''the mony braw thanks" 
given by '"ilka wife" to the '' meikle black deil that 
danc'd awa' wi' the exciseman," — Robert Burns was 
never crushed by reverses, nor rendered giddy by good 
fortune, but was ever the same defiant, indomitable, 
and independent spirit, exemplifying in every condition 
of life that "a man's a man for a' that." 

Formed of all the opposing elements, he was to the 
last a prodigy. The pride of Lucifer was tempered 
with the humility of the violet of the valley. With 
passions like the unfettered ocean, were blended the 
soft repose of a woman's gentleness. With a tireless 
hatred that was never quenched, was mixed a tender 
love that never blanched or faded. With a dauntless 
daring that never quailed, was united a pity, that at 
others' woe melted '•' like the snow-falls on the river." 
With an ardent love for the silent solitude, was 
strangely mingled an ardent love for the company of 
human kind. There was but one step from the beaker's 
lip whicli met his so madly, to the chalice of beauty 
and terror, which he kissed and quaffed with rapture. 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 



"^ZZ 



And so ever over the shadows of Hell gleamed the very 
hues of Heaven, and so this ''pendulum betwixt a 
smile and tear" — "half dust, half Deity" — lived on, 
and died. 

Fot half a century Scotland strove to redeem her sad 
neglect of her champion-child. 

On the hills of Ayr a monumental pile holds silent 
and eloquent converse with the scenes of his boyhood, 
and the hills of "Edina, Scotia's darling seat, where 
once beneath a monarch's feet sat legislation's sover- 
eign powers," are crowned with a shaft, which, amid 
the honored shades of her palaces and towers, tells of 
''modest merit's silent claim," and of the triumphal 
entry of this erratic conqueror of song within her halls. 
And Dumfries too has her landmark over the domain 
of the honored dead. But marble cenotaphs and mau- 
soleums cannot prove the gratitude of Scotland's heart. 
She must make a pilgrimage to his shrine, and do 
homage in person at the birthplace of her minstrel. 
And so, on the fiftieth anniversary of his deaths Scot- 
land, as if moved by one spontaneous impulse, thronged 
to this sun-lit Mecca of her pride. Orators and states- 
men, poets and peasants, from hilltop and valley, jour- 
neyed to pay their just tribute to his memory. Steamers, 
with gay pennants, embracing the glad air, as if con- 
scious of the gala-day, danced in jubilee-triumph upon 
the sea, keeping time in joy to the measured beat of the 
music of the waves which bore ten thousand to where 
Ayr loomed up in glory and grandeur : and locomotives, 
caparisoned with banners, bearing other ten thousand, 

glided in holiday grace over many a scene made mem- 
M 



134 ADDRESS ON BURNS. 

orable by his song. A hundred bands burst forth in 
strains of national music, and eighty thousand Scotsmen 
met around the ruins of that auld clay biggin, and, 
mingling their voices with the voices of the surges of 
the sea, filled the welkin with Ye banks and braes o' 
bonnie Doon. And the charmed air swelled in rapture, 
as the offering of music was poured out at the shrine 
of this devotee of harmony, and haunted old Kirk 
Alloway, laying aside for the hour her glamour and her 
gloom, looked down and her serene and shrouded 
sleepers looked up with benignant smile, and the pleased 
shades of the Mighty Dead overshadowed all the scene, 
— and Burns blessed Scotland, and Scotland blessed 
Burns. She had atoned for her fault, and was forgiven. 
Sleep on, sleep on, thou Honor of thy Race ! Thy 
Olympic race has been run and Avon ! Eternal Fame, 
bearing in her trembling hand the jeweled diadem, has 
long since crowned thee victor, and Time, the chroni- 
cler and critic of the Past, has long since approved the 
award. Henceforth multitudes of spectral visitants to 
Poets' Corner in the Elysian fields, seeking converse 
of the master-spirits of poetry, while on earth, will pass 
by the gorgeous retreats of the Homers and the Byrons, 
and finding thy sequestered abode in some mountain- 
valley in the Highlands of heaven, on the winding 
banks of some bonnie Doon, or Devon overspread with 
mountain daisies, will pause and spend " one wee short 
hour" with the poet of Caledonia. Well might Car- 
iyle exclaim, '^ While the Shakspeares and Miltons roll 
on like mighty rivers through the country of thought, 
bearing fleets of traffickers and assiduous pearl-fishers 



ADDRESS ON BURNS. 



135 



on their waves, this little Valclusa fountain will also 
arrest our eye. For this, also, is of -Nature's own and 
most cunning workmanship, — bursts forth from the 
depths of the earth, with a full gushing current into 
the light of day ; and often will the traveler turn aside 
to drink of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks 
and pines." And well might Campbell sing: 

"And see the Scottish exile tanned 
By many a far and foreign dime, 
Bend o'er his home-born verse, and weep 
In memory of his native land, 
With love that scorns the lapse of time, 
And ties that stretch beyond the dee]D. 

" Encamped by Indian rivers wild, 
The soldier resting on his arms. 
In Burns's carol sweet recalls 
The scenes that blest him when a child, 
And glows and gladdens at the charms 
Of Scotia's woods and waterfalls." 

We believe that when that mysterious power of proud 
Albion, which now bears dominion from Greenland to 
the Ganges, shall have departed like a phantom of the 
night, and be remembered only by the glory of her by- 
gone achievements ; when in the dim vista of the far- 
off future the British monarchy, illustrious in the line 
of centuries, shall have been changed into a still more 
illustrious republic, by the Spirit of Independence and 
Liberty inspired by the child of imperial genius, in the 
topple of kings and thrones, Robert Burns will still 
stand a colossus in their midst, whose feet the waves 
of Time will wash without wasting, and around whose 
brow will hang a halo of resplendent glory forever. 



POEMS. 



M - 



(137) 



POEMS. 



THE WORSHIP OF THE WOODS. 

I. 

In the boundless and billowy splendor 
Of the green-waving prairie we stand, 

And fancy we see the creation, 
And hear the omnific command : 

II. 

"Thus far shalt thou go and no farther, 
And here let thy proud waves be stayed !" 

And the ocean, transmuted to prairie, 
Stands in emerald glory arrayed. 

III. 

How it welcomes us all to its triumph, 
As it sways its broad pennant of green ! 

But God seems retreating, retreating, 

With each surge of the shadow and sheen. 

(139) 



I40 



THE Jr V V _= 17 Z-£ n^OODS. 



IV. 



Thoogh the prairies are ' r : : : :' t: 

Aad joyous as st : ^ t 
Still, no holiness ; T - -.: - : :. 

And God seems so fer, &r away, — 



F:r :/;vay in his forest cathedral, 

Ir. :-.r ^eep anddim solitode, —here 

T::t : : .- .1 :-frs ever are bending, 
L kt gr r_ : : :ded hermits at prayer; 

VI. 

Where the boughs are all burdened with blessings. 

And the air o'erflow^ ns with bliss. 
As the breath of the momii^g irr^^rr^se? 

It mystical viiginal kiss ■. 

vn. 

Where the tmibrage so sacred hangs idly. 

Like a holiday banner nnforled. 
And the leaves fling their benisons downward. 

In dew-drops with beauty impearled ; 

vm. 

Where the incense falls, sprinkled from censers 
Swung aloft by the hand of some sprite. 

Baptizing us all in aroma 

Distilled in the chalice of night; 



THE WORSHIP OF THE WOODS. 141 



IX. 



Where the zephyrs but whisper their vespers, 
As they halt by their sbrines in the grove, 

And the fount falters faintly its ave, 

As it glides through the temple of Jove ; 



X. 



Lo ! the azure-stained glass in the window, 

In the rift of the ceiling above, 
Where a sad star drops down, in the twilight, 



Its marvelous message of love. 



XI. 



So the woods keep the Sabbath forever, 

Though no chimes the awed echoes upstait. 

Yet the stillness responds to our feelings. 
As oracles answer the heart. 



XII. 



For the spot is too holy for voices. 
And no sandaled foot here ever trod ; 

But the silence seems petrified music, 
Enfolding the presence of God. 



XIII. 



And He lingers beneath the oak's shadow, 
Outstretched, as the cherubim's wings. 

And calls us beneath his pavilion, 
To whisper us rapturous things. 



142 THE SEA-CORALS DREAM. 

. XIV. 

The Tree-Spirit touches an organ, 
And the waves of a diapase roll 

Down the aisles of the forest a paean 
That melts in the aisles of the soul. 

Ottawa, July 17th, 1869. 



THE SEA-CORAL'S DREAM. 

I. 

Deep in Neptune's nether empire, 
Sceptred sat the coral grandsire, 
While the myriads of his children danced with every 
ocean sprite ; 
Weary feet anon beat firmer 
To the sea-shells' mimic murmur, 
Reveling with the imps of Eblis, dreaming never of 
the light. 

II. 

Thus in gloom they gamboled ever, 
Morning flushed their pallor never. 

Pearls imperial would glimmer, but no starry bloom of 
night ; 
Smile-girt sky would not caress them, 
Nor would rainbow banner bless them, 

For they reared no altar to the Oriental God of Light. 



THE SEA-CORAVS DREAM. 143 

III. . 

Then the revel was upbroken 
By the monarch's voice outspoken, ^ 

And the white-clad myriads surceased dallying with 
Naiads bright : 
'' Work forever ! 'Tis our duty, — 
Overtop the wave with beauty ; 
We must build upon the darkness and so reach the 
realm of light. 

IV. 

*' Upward build, through sea-green portals, 
Lost Atlantis, — home for mortals, — 
Occidental elfin-island, such as loomed on Plato's 
sight; 
An august domain for races. 
Tenants on life's hid oases. 
Let the base be laid in silence ; let the summit rest in 
light. 

V. 

" Work is worship ! never tire ! 
Pile your magic fabric higher ! " 
Like a mystic band masonic, working, ay, with voice- 
less rite, — 
With the compass and the bevel, 
Tiny trowel, square, and level. 
They upbuild their towering temple, longing for the 
land of light. 



144 ' ^-^^ SEA-CORAL'S DREAM. 

VI. 

Long they dreamed of misty mountain, 
Played in Undine's fairy fountain, 
Hearkened to the wild-wood warble, charming sylvan 
nymphs from flight ; 
Saw the forest-shadows quiver 
On the listless, wanton river, 
Creeping to the bland embraces of an ocean broad and 
bright. 

VII. 

Watched the nautilus careering, 
'Mid unfettered tempests veering, 
Saw the surf to breakers bowing, doffing countless tur- 
bans white ; 
Billows languid chasing billows. 
Couching on Lethean pillows, 
On their careworn mother's bosom, with the spectre 
stars of night. 

VIII. 

Dreamed of summer's roses sleeping, 
Dreamed of auburn autumn weeping, 
, Spring's young zephyrs laughing, wafting odors to the 
blossoms bright ; 
Fancied phantoms most appalling, 
Winter's tears to snowflakes falling ! 
While the crystal icebergs glitter, waltzing on a sea of 
light. 



THE SEA-CORAL'S DREAM. 145 

IX. 

Tempted were they without mercy, 
By enchanters worse than Circe ; 
Sirens lured with maddening music, coldly folding them 
with fright. 
Lulled and listening as they linger. 
Touch of coral-angel's finger, 
Warns and woos them, while it whispers, ''Onward, 
upward, to the light !" 

X. 

Evermore they heed this motto, 
Dying in their gorgeous grotto. 
And entombed in stately order, robed in royal shrouds 
of white ; 
Sea-dirge sung or bones left bleaching. 
These mute martyrs still keep preaching, 
From the charnel leap the living ; from the darkness 
dawns the light. 

XI. 

Laid in catacombs of glory, 
They embalm earth's primal story, 
Older than the bliss of Eden, budding ere the demon's 
blight ; 
Carving hieroglyphic pages. 
They adorn the aisles of ages ; 
Some are moulding for Columbus continental visions 
bright. 
N 10 



146 THE SEA-CORAL'S DREAM. 

XII. 

Cycles glided past the spoiler ; 
Perished many a patient toiler ; 
But the ranks were closed and crowded with recruits 
in mail bedight ; 
Hopeful that some coral brother, 
In some distant age or other, 
Would, above the foam-crest peering, sit enthroned 
amid the light. 

XIII. 

Faithful coral sons and daughters. 
You have reached the radiant waters, 
And have heard the petrel prophet, ere the storm-king 
rules in might ; 
Hymns of halcyons, without number, 
Rock the top surge into slumber ; 
Fascination floats around you, in the gleaming land of 
light. 

XIV. 

They have triumphed o'er all danger, — 
Sunlight clasps each sea-born stranger, — 
Glad Aurora kisses this unsullied host with fond de- 
light ; 
Twilight with her glamour greets them, 
Far-off Alcyone meets them ; 
Coral dreamers ! Island builders ! welcome to the 
land of light ! 



THE SEA-CORAL'S DREAM. 147 

XV. 

And their dream is yet unbroken, 
Yet they hear words spirit spoken : 
*' Strive now for the empyrean ! Climb to its effulgent 
height ! 
Beaconed by the heavenly Pharos, 
Mount where dauntless seraphs dare us. 
Wonder-workers ! stand united, like a phalanx armed 
for fight!" 

XVI. 

They will never faint nor falter 
Till they rear a star-lit altar, 
And a lofty, dazzling temple, in the chosen cherub's 
sight ; 
With such aim some still are building, 
All their toil with glory gilding, 
Dreaming nevermore of darkness, — ever of celestial 
light. 

XVII. 

Will they reach that lustrous haven 

With their fame in halos graven ? 
'^ Surely, down Time's shoreless vista," echoes Faith, 
with fervid plight, 

" They have bravely born the burden, 

And will win a golden guerdon, 
Wh.n the Coral's dream is ended, — ended in the holy 



light. 



1865. 



1 48 ON THE DEA TH OF JOHN CAMPBELL. 



LINES WRITTEN ON THE DEATH OF JOHN 
CAMPBELL, OF PIQUA, OHIO. 

I. 

'TwAS a bright summer eve and the last one in June, 

The shower was o'er, and the rainbow unfurled, 

Sure none would have thought 'mid such glory and 

bloom 
The spirit of Death was abroad in the world \ 
But his dark track one e'en then could trace. 
As his shadow fell on a soldier's face. 
That lay on his couch, with a placid brow, 
And breathed to his God in a noiseless vow. 

II. 

And his friends were there, and with tearful eye 
Were watching the patriot silently. 
When each one spoke as he seemed to know. 
That the sand in the old man's glass ran low, 
For his veins were shrunk and his pulse beat slow. 

III. 

But the hero raised him from his bed. 
And shook his silvery locks, and said, 
"I'll see the Fourth day of July," 
Then breathed a prayer to God on high 
To grant that wish, and let him die. 



ON THE DEATH OF JOHN CAMPBELL. 149 

IV. 

And the hero lived, and the natal day 

Of Freedom and his country came, — 

Came robed in the sheen and holy array, 

To worship at Liberty's fane; 

The sun shone out so gorgeously fair 

On pennons that flapped in the morning air, 

As morn's vapory veil, on gossamer wing 

Careered, then away like a living thing ; 

While the merry birds' chant in the glen was drowned, 

As the cannon spoke, and its holiday sound 

Was tattled by echoes in valleys around. 



V. 

Still the old man lived, and his shrunk-up vein 
Would swell with its patriot blood again ; 
And a smile and a glow would steal once more 
O'er the veteran's face, as it did of yore. 
As the sunlight flood, and the winds' perfume, 
Would revel so wild in the sick man's room. 



VI. 

And still, when the war-guns pierced his ear 
And the welkin rang with the free-born shout, 
There dropped from his cheek a joyful tear. 
As of bygone times, and the change he thought ; 
And he heard again — what sound could that be ? 
'Twas the heavy tramp of the bold and free, 



150 ON THE DEATH OF JOHN CAMPBELL. 

By the distance borne ; and a wandering note 
Anon on the old man's ear would float, 
As music oft comes in the dreamy hour, 
And will seem itself but a light-winged dream, 
Till it wakes us up with its fairy power : 
Such did these notes to the veteran seem. 
As the pageant neared, he heard again, 
And he raised himself on his withered hand ; 
The old man thought he knew the strain. 
For 'twas '' Hail Columbia, happy land." 

VII. 

The pageant stopped at the old man's door ; 
He asked to gaze on the flag once more, 
That he erst saw fall like a phantom form, 
Then rose and waved in the strife and storm ; 
And now, where a breeze its folds can lave. 
Where a topmast rides the sparkling wave. 
Where a streamlet feels the surging tide, 
When the sunbeams kiss its folds in pride. 
On the green vale's breast, on our native hills, 
Where its guard, the restless eagle, builds ; 
On the hamlet-spire, — on the nation's dome, 
'Tis a beacon there of Freedom's home, 
'Tis a watchword there to Freedom's sons. 
And points to the spot where Freedom rests, 
To the rising wonder of the West. 



THE TELL-TALE FAY. 151 

VIII. 

'Twas borne with joy to the hero's bed, 

With its rainbow beauties all outspread ; 

Its rich stripes blushed on the spotless white, 

Like ruby belts on a sheet of light, 

While its spangles danced on the blue so bright, 

Like stars will dance on the ocean's blue 

When the sky's serene at the dead of night, 

And its blue shade lies so restless too. 

As the wave is moved by the zephyr sprite. 

IX. 

Again, from his couch the veteran raised. 
Again on the sky-born thing he gazed. 
And again was heard that music-blast ; 
The old man sighed, — it was his last, — 
For the hero's gone, — life's pageant's past. 

June, 1844. 



THE TELL-TALE FAY. 

I. 
When the elfin bell tolled the midnight time, 
And the homeward steps of grim warlocks chime. 
And dim spectres fade, in the ruins' shade. 
Where the tale of the owl and the ivy is said. 
Love's fays then awoke from the wild beds in 
Which they had laid, for their work must begin : 
'Twas to watch through the day in the hearts of men, 
And relate at eve, what they saw, to their Queen. 



152 THE TELL-TALE FAY. 

II. 

Some fays from the haunted stream there crept, 
Where some beams in crystal glory slept ; 
Some rocked in the arms of the wanton breeze, 
Some rode in pomp on the silvered fleece. 
And some there awoke and sipped chaste dew. 
That distilled in the flower of violet hue ; 
Some rose from their couch in the rosebud bright. 
And put on their robes by the glow-worm's light. 
And some woke from their sleep in the poppy's head. 
Having dreamed of the heaven of the fairy dead. 
And away they fly on wings that shine. 
To see who bows at their fairies' shrine. 

III. 

Love sat all alone in a spell-hung hall. 

Where shadows scarce steal from the mystic wall, 

And silence breeds still-born silence there. 

And buries its dead with a miser's care. 

Such spots we've trod, nor felt control 

To shake strange feelings from the soul. 

IV. 

Love sat all alone, in that wild retreat. 
Where feet never trod, save the fairies' feet, 
And the air never tunes the wind-harp's strings. 
Except when fanned by the fairies' wings. 
Or jarred by the sparkling cascade's leap. 
But its leap was soft as the march of sleep ; 
Each pearl-drop crept from its home so still, 
That it seemed to wait for the fairies' will. 



THE TELL-TALE FAY. 

V. 

And the fairy gazed at its burnished spray, 
That imaged the gold-edged cloud in the west"; 
'Twas the omen bright of the doom of the day, 
When the sunbeam smiles for its roseate rest. 
The hour would soon, she knew, be brought 
When she must weave the web of her thought ; 
And with delicate touch the rainbow hues 
She wove into fancies gentle as dews, 
As dews that fall when the zephyrs cease. 
And the soft stars brood o'er a world at peace. 
(For each drop its arched flag unfurled 
In its glassy sky, as each drop was a world) : 
And just in time, for she turned, and as soon 
All above, all around, was a purple gloom ; 
And Night flung her spangled pall in pride 
O'er earth, the spot where the day-god died. 

VI. 

Love waved her wand with her spirit-hand, 
A myriad fays, so light, there came 
From ocean's strand, and the spell-bound land. 
To tell how wide was their Queen's fame. 

VII. 

One told of the burning words she heard. 
And swore 'twas true as the vow of weird; 
One told she had heard a myriad sighs; 
One saw tears start from a million eyes : " 
Some fell, as the dew from the cliff-flower blown, 
Some stood, as if melted agate stone. 



153 



154 



THE TELL-TALE FAY. 



VIII. 



And poets one saw, round the Idol throng, 

To list to the charm of love's siren song, 

And soft music too was heard from afar. 

By a castle gray, from the wild guitar; 

And one heard a maniac laugh her name, 

As if memory flowed to his dizzy brain, 

And was sad anon when the vision passed 

To the urn of vanished thought at last. 

One spoke of kisses she met in her way; 

One emptied the smiles she gathered that day; 

Some told dreams that were dreamed of their Queen ; 

Some whispered of scenes such as never were seen. 



IX. 

Another said she had thrown a dart. 
And watched the blood gush from his heart. 
Till mantling o'er his cheek and brow. 
He owned the Queen, and made his vow. 



X. 

As the fays told their tale the Queen wove her web, 
The web of her thought, — that thought of herself. 
And laughed as she threw 'cross the brilliant thread, 
And peopled her web with the tales of elf. 
She wove in the rainbows, and blushes and dreams. 
She wove ih fond smiles, reflected love-beams. 
And wild sighs entwined so close to the heart, 
And the talisman kiss, the key of her art. 



< 



THE TELL-TALE FAY. 



XI. 



^^^ 



She stopped and gazed at her magic web, 

So full of beauty; 
She praised the fays, who so well had said, 

And done their duty. 

XII. 

She stopped, for the last of the fays stood by, 
To tell his tale, and that tale was a lie. . 
And that tell-tale fay thus spoke : "I ween 
'Tis true that's been told to my fairy Queen, 
But I found that men worshiped not you alone. 
For they always kneeled to more shrines than one." 

XIII. 

Moveless as the wave was her fairy form. 

When the fabled bird sings to the ocean's storm; 

For that thought was worse than the Gorgon's head, 

Which turned all into stone. Ah ! her magic web 

Was spoiled : and she swore (it is said) 

By the Stygian powers, and the powers above. 

As she tore that cursed thread from her web, 

No more should her fays go on errands of love. 

And that fay should be chained with thread so drear. 

Outlawed from her court for a hundred year ; 

But the oath was recalled, as the fay-legends say 

She believed not the tale of the Tell-Tale Fay. 

January 28th, 1844. 



,56 BOYHOOD'S VISIOy. 



BOYHOOD'S VISION. 

I. 

In youth, when life was a holiday, 

And nature donned her regalia. 

Our young imaginations lent 

A brighter hue and a sweeter scent 

To every bud and everv leaf 

Than wear they in our manhood's grief. 

How happy were we then, as came, 

Hurriedly to our tender brain, 

A thousand castles of the air. 

Gorgeously built, and far more fair, 

Lighter and lovelier, too, I ween, 

Than ever glanced through a sylphid's dream ! 

II. 

In youth, in the mind's millennium, 

We all have fashioned elysium, 

And anticipated a gala-day 

In manhood's coming Utopia. 

Hath never a day-dream of a clime, 

Compared to which, in loveliness, 

Eden itself was a wilderness, 

Passed, like a pageant, through your mind ? 

Or a beautiful harem of the East, 

With rose and lyre, and beauty's lure, 

A ne plus ultra, — a fitting feast, — 

For the heart of the wildest epicure 



BOYHOOD'S VISION. 157 

(Such as we read of Lalla Rookh, 

Don Juan, or some other book), 

Is but a very dim reflection. 

Compared to childhood's bright conception, — 



III. - . 

Whose rivulets were so clear and pure, 
That a pearl in the waters would seem obscure, 
So pure that the whitest houri's limb 
Would sully it, if she laved them in ; 
Whose air was voluptuous, and as soft 
As a peri's breath, perfumed aloft ; 
Where round us, aye, would murmurs float. 
Of the zephyr's faint ^olian note, 
Where one forever might nectar sip, 
Sparkling as Hebe's hand e'er bore, 
And ambrosia sweet as celestial lip 
Tasted in fabled days of yore. 



IV. 



How oft we wearied our infant powers 
To make it a sky unlike to ours, 
So that a cloud of the whitest ray 
Never on" its gay vault might stray! 
And whether to spread a galaxy bright, 
Or belt it round with tiie northern light, 
Or with half moons strew, or with comet's cue. 
Or crossbar it o'er with the rainbow's hue* 
O 



158 BOYHoons vision: 

Or make it of meteors perpetually shooting, 
Were queries our minds were forever mooting. 
In our life's springtime, in its golden age, 
Such visions were childhood's heritage. 



V. 

But now we must breathe on a real earth ; 
Gone are the pleasures of childhood's birth ; 
And the master is gone we were wont to fool,. — 
Ah, we cannot play truant in manhood's school ! 
And, now, when we're grown wiser and older, 
And weeds are not men, and we are not soldiers. 
And we cannot catch minnows on bent pin-hooks, 
We now never tire on benches and books : 
Xo longer we follow the butterfly's flight, 
No wind ever buoyeth our newspaper kite ; 
We never play marbles, we never roll hoops. 
We never blow bubbles, we never crack whips. 
We never sail boats, we never pipe whistles, 
We pluck not the feathery beard of the thistles ; 
We ride no rock-horses, we fight not hum-bees. 
We hunt not for bird -eggs, we never climb trees, 
Xo bounding of balls, no spinning of tops, 
Xo longings for every toy in the shops. 
And St. Bellsnickle never fills stocking or shoe 
On a Christmas-eve, as he used to do. 
All are gone ! Still, we will remember the zest 
Of the sports and illusions which infancy blest. 



LINES TO GREECE. 159 



VI. 



When hope mantled life with its ever-gilt veil, 
And wheedled young hearts with its flattering tale, 
Our love was as true as a mother's caress. 
And as warm as a thought in a cherub's breast. 
And our sighs and our tears were rarer then 
Than a siren's tune or Jove's gold rein. 

VII. 

But, to watch these boyish visions flee 

One by one, — all mockery ! 

To toil with toil, and strive with strife ; 

To feel the selfishness of life ; 

To fear the future ere it came ; 

To think for aye of brightness gone. 

And not forget it when one would, — 

This is the dowry of manhood. 

June 7th, 1845. 



LINES TO GREECE. 

To H. E. 

Greece ! Greece ! Greece ! thou art a very riddle. 
First in the heraldry of this world's fame ; 
First in the pageantry of this world's woe ; 
Thou first-born and first victim of old Time ; 
Thou marvel of the Gone and the To-come ! 
What thou wert once, and what art now, alike 
Are mystery. 



i6o LINES TO GREECE. 

Nursling of all the Gods, 
Land of the Oracle and Augury, 
Home of the Sylph, the Spectre, and the Fay, 
Lone nunnery of nymph, and fabled sprite. 
Haunt of the wizard, and his mystic bride, 
Recess of monster, Dryad, Satyr, Faun, 
The impress of Time's signet is on thee. 

Strange land ! within thy borders was wrapped up 
The strange machinery of three strange worlds, 
Elysium, Hades, and thee, earth's idol 
(For thou thyself art as a worn-out world). 

But all are fled like madmen's vagaries : 

The two are now but Poet's thought and theme, 

And thou art but the crawling-ground of slaves : 

Thy Gods, from Jove, whose anthem was the storm. 

E'en to the meanest Hearth-God, to whose praise 

The cricket chirped, are throneless, mitreless. 

Alone the gray owl hoots his paean 'mid 

Their fanes, which are his dreary heritage. 

Why, Greece ! a worse than Gorgon's gaze meets thine 

Ruin has brooded o'er thee, and has harped 

His victor-tune to Solitude so long. 

That wind and stream, on hilltop, and in vale, 

Know every note of thy woe's minstrelsy. 

Still, witching clime, thou art the theatre 
Whereto the wide world throngs, and lingereth, 
To watch dead Beauty playing Pantomime. 
Genii of Painting and of Sculpture ! 



LINES TO GREECE. i6i 

After thy pictured feast the artist's eye 
Doth hanker ; and full strange it is to see 
Decay and him, a wondrous brotherhood, 
■^Glut their keen eyes on one dim canvas : 
The one, till surfeited with feeding on 
Its beauty, pauses in his Circean toil. 
And wonders oft and long, how mellow mingling 
Of light and shade can make such sacrilege, . 
And mockery of life ; the other still. 
With lustful eye, and steady slow wan hand. 
Puts ever on old Time's last pencilings. 

And ye, who post a welcome in men's hearts 

To thy worship's wild infatuation ! 

Where is thy Pantheon full of sculptured gods? 

Bold and presuming mimickers of Jove, 

Who moulded, in your brains' idolatry. 

The viewless shapes of virtue and of vice, 

And then did chisel out their incarnation 

In cold marble for our adoration. 

How ungrateful were ye ! Why, even these, 

Thy creatures, voiceless, lone and passionless. 

Look their gratitude to their creators 

Out from their eyes and lips and hueless brows, 

And have wooed and won ye the world's memory; 

'Tis well ye fashionedst the Great Unknown. 

Greece ! Greece ! Greece ! thou art a very riddle ! 
Thou heirless thing, — first, last, only of thy kind, 
No more of thee ! 

O* II 



1 62 HAVE YOU NEVER SEEN ON EARTH, 

Thy once reality 
Seenieth a very dream, a dream's sad dream, 
The which to recollect, and muse upon, 
Makes mixture delicate of reverence, 
And rapture, mystery, gloom, and gladness. 
When thou wert censor, offering and all. 
And Destiny, the High Priest, and the God, 
The fragrance of thy burning filled the earth. 
And is even yet an odor and an opiate. 
Oh, how I've longed to make my pilgrimage 
Unto thy talismanic, venerated shores. 
And tread thy soil, as on a mother's grave ! 
Greece ! Greece ! thou art a very riddle, and 
Though dead, the world shall dream of thee for aye. 

October i8th, 1845. 



SAY! HAVE YOU NEVER SEEN ON EARTH. 

To L. T. 

I. 

Say ! have you never, never seen 

On earth, a most unearthlike one. 
Like the incarnation of Passion's dream. 

When he woos Fancy just for fun ; 
Whom you would take, in your "mind's eye" 

(As Memory softly would unfold her), 
For a model to make a Venus by, 

If Medici should ever mould her ? 



HAVE YOU NEVER SEEN ON EARTH. 163 

II. 

Have you never, never yet seen one 

Whose exquisite loveliness would make 
(As wonder-struck you lingered on) 

Your inmost sense of beauty ache ; 
Whilst a delicate joy would wed your heart 

As your eye fed on the luxury, 
From which you dared not think to part, 

Yet knew you must, — in agony ? 



III. 

What ! did you never, never feel 

That a change on your ideal had been wrought,- 
That her throne was gone, — and now one real 

Sat empress over every thought ? 
I know you must, — I might as soon 

Have asked if ever, from afar, 
You felt aught lovely in the moon, 

Or sky all jeweled o'er with stars ; 



IV. 

If the odor of eglantine or rose, 

Or the heavy perfume of a pretty flower, 
Ever, like incense, touched your nose, 

With a sweet, intoxicating power ; 
If ever a dainty touched your tongue, 

With a wild and a strange voluptuous thrill ; 
Or if tones were ever together strung. 

That you wished you could remember still. 



164 LIXES O.V A.V LVD IAN TOM 3. 

V. 

Ah ! these are beautiful and sweet, — yes, very, 

And to their witchery inly ever 
Our briglitest thoughts were tributary. 

And we will ne'er forget them-^never; 
But what are these to beauty, living, 

Smiling, blooming, blushing, dimpling. 
Looking love, and kiss- forgiving ? 

Nothing — so the poet's thinking. 

April 28th, 1845. 



LINES ON AN INDIAN TOMB. 



Near Fort Steuben, where heaved Ohio's tide, 

And oak-shades danced upon its crystal sheen, 
A rude old rock, in solitary pride, 

Rose gray, hard by a wild-wrought slope of green. 

None would have thought such place had ever been 
A cemetery for a worn-out race. 

Now, as it ne'er lived, save in legends true, 
Or hallowed things hyena-spirits trace, — 

So thought the Mingo chiefs when taking their last 

view. 

II. 

There, for an age, a hundred dark men slept. 

Nor dreamed one dream of love, or chase, or war ; 
But wild flowers bloomed, and untaught ivy crept 



LINES ON AN INDIAN TOMB. 165 

Round that sad tomb hallowed by nature's care, 

Where death and stiUness made their holy lair. 
No echoing whoop had urged them on to fight, • 

An age had listened vainly for one song; 
No dance they joined, no council-fires might light. 

They gathered not to muse e'en once their race's 
wrong. 

III. 

But there they slept, till, in a merry hour. 
When civilization, in its maddened mirth. 

Had stamped its seal of wide-spread change and power 
On Indian scene, and home, and all 'twas worth, — 
A place in savage thoughts e'en from their birth, — 

A quarrier blithely hied him to this rock 
(Led not, forsooth, by antiquary spell). 

Moved from its narrow mouth a closing block. 

Entered, and stood aghast, where fleshless warriors 
dwell. 

IV. 

And paused on undistinguished bones, and soil 

All thick and black, of other races' dust ; 
Such pause as goes before unholy toil 

When spot and feeling tell us that we must. 

And then, as stirred by some revengeful lust, 
They gathered wildly round that noiseless urn, 

And raked out what was left of Logan's men, 
As if no shame could in their bosoms burn. 

Which, less 'twere thoughtless done, should burn e'en 
now, I ken. 



1 66 LINES ON AN INDIAN TOMB. 

V. 

We school-bo }^ went, with Virgil under arm. 
To see this wild and most unchristian scene, 

And threw at skulls, for marks, not thinking harm, 
Nor knowing they had maids or chieftains been, 
Nor sort of thought had housed there erst, I ween. 

Our book had taught us it were wrong, I own, 
For heathen paid their dead old Charon's fee, 

To rite the tombless, over earth they'd roam ; 

These should have studied pagan faith, and so ought 
we. 

YI. 

Some bore off hatchet, pipe, or skeleton, 
As trophies of this triumph o'er the dead ; 

Some wrote their sacrilege upon the stone. 
As if all reverence for the grave had fled, 
And no one would condemn the names there spread. 

Whene'er I feel in a romantic mood. 

And wander to that rock all stripped inside, 

I then reflect how reckless spirits could 

So violate the graveyard of that ruined tribe. 

April, 23d, 1844. 



THE ELFIN KiVlGHT. 167 

THE ELFIN KNIGHT, 
To J. A. 

I. 

Pretty one of my dreams, I will rhyme thee a rhyme : 

There was a fay, once upon a time, 

Who had reveled too long on his wassail and wine 

With his elfin kith and kin. 
He recked not the hours on glass and sand, 
He recked not the beck of Queen Mab's wand. 
So, shut out from the gate to fairy-land, 

To think he did begin. 

II. 

When he found him in this sorry plight, 

He plumed his delicate wing for flight. 

To see what, in truth, could be seen that night. 

In a loving lady's brain. 
And anon he hied him in great haste. 
Where the filmy dream keeps trysting-place 
With her idol-thought. He quickened pace. 

For his lamp began to wane. 

III. 
Not long this errant elf did wander 
Till to her wild-brain's haunted chamber 
He came, and in forthwith did clamber, 

All masked so tidy, I ween. 
And as through the bowers of soul he past. 
He saw that reason was sleep afast 
On the couch of a spell himself he cast. 

To see and not be seen. 



1 68 THE ELFiy KNIGHT. 

IV. 

Soon her idol-thought, from its stainless breast, 
Drew out with a raiser's care, and prest, 
A miniature youth, ideally traced, 

By the hand of a first glance. 
And a melting dream, a strange alloy, 
With one half doubt, and the other half joy, 
It folded around the image boy, 

Then fled, as it came bv chance. 



And lives there a man of mind so base, 
Who has not with spirit-finger traced 
A woman's form, a woman's face. 

On that strange canvas, thought ? 
Nor watched her with a joyous care, 
That one of beauty, bright and dear. 
Which Fancy's touch hath painted there. 

In miniature high-wrought ? 



VI. 

Hath a lovelier one ne'er haunted thee, 
Than ever glowed on a painter's ee. 
Or lived in a sculptor's reverie, 

Or in vision of a poet ? 
Hath never there hovered a sweet, chaste form, 
Like a bow of promise, o'er thy heart's wild storm. 
And thrown o'er life a hope, a charm ? 

Yes, yes, there hath. I know it. 



THE ELFIN KNIGHT. 169 

VII. 

Who's shaped not one of unearthly gleam, 
Who's nursed her not in his soul's bright gleam, 
And wooed in the twilight of his dream 

Such a phantom of the brain ? 
And built her there a gilded bower, 
And strewed it o'er with gem and flower, 
And loitered many a thrilling hour 

With one, who hath no name ? 

VIII. 

Yes, we have felt and owned the spelJ 
Of her we've worshiped, loved so well, 
Yes, we may blush, but still must tell, — 

We've loved this beau ideal. 
She's born of Fancy and of Love, 
She's garnished with a fairy's robe, 
And comes from beauty's land above : 

Who's wished not she was real ? 

[X. 

With a brow so fair, and an eye so blue, 

And streaming hair of a golden hue. 

With a lip so soft, and pouting too. 

And a cheek of dimpled red, 

I've thought her smile has fell on me, 

And voice that murmurs melody, 

And kiss imprinted modestly, 

But stop — my idol's fled. 
P 



170 



THE ELFIN KNIGHT. 
X. 

Fate ! thou indeed hast it well fixed 

To let her never longer tarry, 
Than we're in love — then play this trick, 

And we, poor souls, must court and marry. 
That she will take some real form, 

Sure, any fool would know; 
And then we feel so sad, forlorn, 

To hunt her straight we go. 

XI. 

But my tale — said the fay, I now have learned 
(While his tiny bosom with pity burned) 
The love of the lady is not returned. 

As a maiden's love should be : 
And I trow, indeed, it would be right. 
That there should be found some willing knight 
This maiden's tender cause to fight. 

As in times of chivalry. 

XII. 

So he dressed him in a mail so thin 

('Twas a speck of leafy gold). 
That a breath of air, from a sylphid fair, 

Would throw in a thousand fold ; 
And his helmet, the eye of a gilded fly. 

With a feather put in with care. 
So black and bright, like a thread of light, 
Just dyed in the home of the blackest night, 

'Twas a ringlet of her hair. 



THE ELFIN KNIGHT. 



XIII. 



171 



Of a lash of her eye he made his lance, 

And he barbed it with her smile, 
And pointed it with the gaudiest glance 

She had cast for a long, long while. 

XIV. 

And he knows where the rich carnation blows. 

Throwing shame on the tints of the morn. 
For a banner he wanted her crimson glow, 

But she looked confused and forlorn ; 
And her children, the buds, under leaflets creep, 

While their dam with her cheek aflush. 
Did own she had caught the maiden asleep. 

And her robe was a borrowed blush. 
So all mailed, and with banner he back did hie, 
And glassed in the beam of her lovely eye. 

XV. 

Just then a lazy musquito lit 

On the trembling brink of her dewy lip. 

As noiselessly as death; 
And carelessly ever his tongue would dip. 
And nectar sweets anon would sip. 

As he fanned him in her breath. 
So he bridled him with a spider's thread. 

And mounted his steed astride; 
He spurred him right well, and away he sped, 

With his 'squito-horn by his side. 



172 



THE ELFLY KNIGHT. 

XVI. 

But ere to his task the fay did go, 
From her eye of jet a tear did flow, 
Then stood, like a dewdrop on a sloe, 

He snatched it with delight : 
It would make such a unique rosary, 
And, in truth, such a knavish knight was he. 
Full many a bead told o'er must be. 

Ere he went on such holy fight. 

XVII. 

Wizard and warlock. 

Haggle and kelpie, 

Hitherward all flock. 

Your magic can help me; 
Your magic impart, just as I start, 
To storm the castle of his heart. 

XVIII. 

So mailed as I have sung or said, 

He sat his charger astride. 
He spurred him right well, and away he sped, 

With his horn hung by his side. 
And the owl from the blasted tree hoo-hooed, 

And the toad it had caught no fly. 
And the bat darted after in hot pursuit, 

But the rider and steed past by ; 
And the scream of the niglit-bird, he could hear, 

And the hiss of t le snake behin 1, — 
Ah ! the heart of the knight beat fast with fear, 

But he spurred, and was off" with the wind. 



THE ELFIN KNIGHT. 



XIX. 



173 



And as he galloped and galloped along, 

He counted his rosary, 
And prayed Queen Mab would his life prolong, 
While, to drive away care, he hummed this song, 

" Oh, a fairy life for me !" 



THE FAIRY'S SONG. 
XX. 

In the gleam of the summer moon 

We join in gambol and glee, 
'Neath the poisonous mushroom. 

Oh, a fairy life for me ! 
When the beetle's drum-tap calls 

A velvety leaf we line. 
And whirl in the ouphen waltz. 

While our feet with the wind-harp chime. 



XXI. 

No sparkling wine we quaff, 
But richer far in its stead, 

For we get right merry, and laugh. 
On the fumes of the poppy's head ; 

And, oh ! then we drink our fill 
From a drop of pearly dew. 

That the sylphs at dawn distill 

In the bud of violet hue. 
1 * 



174 THE ELFIX KXIGHT. 

XXII. 

Then, in winter, so gayly we ride, 

On a flake of crystal snow, 
And a zephyr-steed we drive 

That heeds nor hip nor whoa ! 
Oh, we are a jolly crew ! 

Dull care from our realm doth flee ; 
Oh, a mortal's life for you. 

But a fairy's life for me ! 

XXIII. 

He ceased, and galloped both fast and far, 
Till he came to a moon-lit bower. 

Where a minstrel was touching his soft guitar. 
To the charms of the twilight hour. 

MINSTREL'S SOXG. 
XXIV. 

Have ever you sat with your loved one nigh, 
'Mid the bloom of earth, 'neath a sapphire sky, 
Marbled prettily o'er with beauteous hue, 
With tints of dun round the circled blue ; 
As if then the zephyr's flattering touch. 
As it wound its silken arms about. 
And whispered its wooing tale so much, 
Had dimpled the cheek of the cloud ; 
When twilight its soft and velvet wing, 
With its delicate shade awide did fling? 



THE ELFIN KNIGHT. 



XXV. 



175 



When leaves nodded lazily to the wind 

As it passed them by, with a murmuring leap, 
And fragrance kissed us so very kind. 

As blossom and bud folded up to sleep? 
When was heard amid the bliss and bloom, 
The katydids' and the crickets' tune, 
And above them all, so sad and shrill, 
The desolate note of the whippoorwill ? 
Say, when twilight trembled with summer sigh, 
Have ever you sat with your loved one nigh ? 

XXVI. 

When the fire-fly's lamp, now glowing, now dark> 

Swung loose in the breeze, with its tiny spark 

For a light, and a joy to the sylphid heart. 

While away from beauty's clime afar, 

Came the throbbing gleam of Eve's blue star? 

With enough of light, and enough of night, 

To stop one's thoughts in a crazy flight, 

And tinsel them o'er so strangely bright, 

With a magic which, in truth, did seem 

To melt them all in one wild dream 

Of love, so hallowed and serene. 

XXVII. 

As if the Nereids, the fatal three, 

That weave at their will life's mottled chain, 
And measure it out so miserly. 

Had got, for once, in a bounteous vein. 



176 THE^ EL FIX KXIGHT. 

So, show the wonders of destiny, 
Or prove the charm that their magic power 
Had thrown, in a cahn and gorgeous hour, 
As a largess in their glee. 

Then have you sat, with your loved one nig-h, 
'Mid the bloom of earth, 'neath a sapphire sky? 



XXVIII. 

'' No conquest here," the knight did say. 
He spurred his steed, and away, away, 
Through air and ether he winged his flight, 
"While a howl rang fierce from the imps of night. 

XXIX. 

Not far did he go ere the knight espied. 
Away in the distance, a flickering light ; 
So he slackened his pace, and began to think 
He would stop his steed and give him a drink. 
And he could rest, and the knight could see 
What in the world this light might be. 

XXX. 

And a cannibal horse this knight was on, 

Both as to his drink and food. 
For his food and his drink they both were one. 

And that one was human blood. 
And his tongue would show things as they were 

(Something like Ithuriel's spear), 



THE ELFIN KNIGHT. 



177 



When the tip of his tongue would come too near, 

It oft made the parson swear. 
And the monk would stop his ave told half, 

And the mason would drop his bevel, 
And the merchant would curse and twist his draft, 

And the lawyer his brief, at the devil. 

XXXI. 

He lit on a poet, nor would he have recked 

Etiquette nor learning, I do suppose. 

If the chap had been writing ambiguous prose. 

But had lit just on the top of his nose, 

Instead of upon his neck. 

But the knight had taught him to be polite 

To a votary of the Nine, 

For he did not drink nor eat a bite 

Till the poet had coined, and the last did write 

This ballad line by line. 

POET'S LINES. 

XXXII. 

Oh, sweet it is to cry. 

When one has something to cry for ; 
And sweeter still to sigh, 

When one has a lady to sigh for. 
'Tis sweet to the skeleton miser. 

To tell over and over his gold, 
'Tis sweet to a maid when one eyes her, 

Who is cast in beauty's mould. 
12 



1 78 THE ELF IX KXIGHT. 

XXXIII. 

And tobacco is calmly sweet, 

If in quid, or if we smoke it, 
But a word of love is sweeter, indeed, 

If in spite of old folks we spoke it. 
To the toper 'tis exquisite sweet, 

When the beaker's lip meets his. 
But how thrilling sweet, when ours meet 

In a hurried and burning kiss ! 



XIV. 

And the poet ceased, and looked well pleased 
That his beautiful task was done, 

When the charger, his head so archly daft. 

And took such a quick and delicious draft, 
'■' By Styx, I dislike all such of your fun !" 

But the steed and the rider laughed. 



XXXV. 

And he hurried him on, much remained undone, 

And the steed must cease his sport. 
Soon the God of Day in the East would play, 

And the knight in the fairy court. 
But at last to the loved one's room he came. 

All's asleep, and silent, and drear; 
His mosquito steed was tired and lame, 

So he stopped on the loved one's ear, 
To see if his h.^art remained the same, 

And to hearken what he might hear. 



THE ELFIN KNIGHT. 179 

XXXVI. 

*' 'Tis enough," said the knight, '' I now have learned," 
Ere a moment he sat on the loved one's ear, " 

*' The love of the lady is not returned. 
And I swear he shall pay full dear. ' ' 

xxxvii. 

He had shut his eye to the maiden's charms, 

And his heart to the maiden's love. 
For ambition had beat his soul to arms. 

And destiny made him move. 
Yes, he was dreaming ambition's dream. 

He had drunk from his cup of fire. 
And another of joy in his grasp did seem, 

So he panted and mounted higher. 

• 

XXXVIII. 

As he looked through the future's vista dim, 

There a halo around his name 
He saw, and a jeweled crown for him, 

In the trembling hand of Fame. 
** I will try, ah ! yes," and he dreamed away, 

" I shall not, must not, tire ! 
And my dream, though a cloud, by this life's day. 

Shall in death's night be of fire." 

XXXIX. 

Yes, you may try, and so must I, 
If I would win the day, 



I So THE ELFIN ANIGHT. 

And if telling these beads to victory leads, 
This knight will ever pray. 
Come, wizard and warlock, 

Haggie and kelpie, 
Hitherward all flock. 

Your magic can help me. 
Your charm impart, for now I start 
To storm the castle of his heart. 

XL. 

So his tiny horn from his belt he drew, — 
He was true to the knightly form, — 

No war would he wage ere a blast he blew. 
To give notice before the storm. 

XLI. 

And a blast which echoed through all the land 

On the sleeper's ear did fall. 
Who quick on his ear did fling his hand, 

And down went rider and all. 
And there lay the steed in his purple gore, 

And there lay the mangled knight. 
And his valor and knighthood they were no more, 

'Twas in truth a pitiful sight. 

XLTI. 

If this elfin tale has caused no laugh 

(I'm sure 'twill not make you cry), 
Will you write this poor knight's epitaph ? 

Pretty one of my dreams, good-by ! 

Nov. nth, 1844. 



THE PEARL-MAKER. i8i 



THE PEARL-MAKER. 

DEDICATED, WITH MY HEART, TO M. C. G. 
I. 

I SAW a coronet of pearls 
Glitter above your golden curls ; 
But one outdazzled every gem 
Upon the bridal diadem. 
When morn unveiled the Orient skies, 
A dusky diver wrenched the prize 
From Ceylon's sea, and for it gave 
His life a forfeit to the wave. 
Long, long ago, in Oman's deep, 
Whose isles of palm in rapture sleep, 
A mussel built its gorgeous home 
Beneath the tumult of the foam. 

II. 

Each sunrise, when weird music flows 
From strings unseen, the shell uprose, 
And, struggling to the topmost height. 
Stole the first rays of rosy light, 
Then dropped down to its silent home, 
Fathoms below the flashing foam. 
And there the patient craftsmen all, 
Embellished on its palace wall. 
And crystallized each rainbow hue 
Purple and green, and gold and blue, 



1 82 THE PEARL-MAKER. 

Till mingled radiance only glows 
Within its chamber of repose. 

III. 

One dawn, again, when halcyons sung 
The sea to sleep, the shell upsprung, 
And languid lay above the blue, 
Sipping ethereal drops of dew, 
And, by another birth of morn, 
A thousand tiny shells are born. 
And in their burnished cradle lie, 
The mother murmuring lullaby ; 
But pangs of anguish cannot part 
One still-born beauty from her heart, 
So she will turn her heart to pearl, — 
A jewel for some golden curl. 

IV. 

The shell, at morn, when sirens sung 
Their song serene, no more upsprung; 
But toiled, in depth all dark and calm, 
Its babe of beauty to embalm. 
Life oozes out in nacre bright, 
Enameling death in opal light. 
Coat upon coat, year after year. 
As drops her iridescent tear. 
Till done the task, she dies elate ! 
The heart lives ! see it palpitate 
Like frozen light ! a heart of peirl ; — 
A tear of God upon the curl. 



THE PEARL-MAKER. 183 

V. 

And when the fisher finds no pearl, 

The wounded mussel oft will hurl 

Back to the sea. Jt will repay 

Him with a gem some far-off day, 

And will reward the wound he gave 

By freedom to some diver-slave. 

One single grain of silver sand 

It clasps within its plastic hand, 

And while it writhes and writhes with pain 

It builds a pearl about that grain ; 

Thus turning trouble into pleasure, 

Thus turning torture into treasure. 



VI. 

Once more that coronet of pearls 
I see above your silver curls ; 
But one is gone, — the bridal pride. 
The diver grasped in Ceylon's tide ; 
It mouldered in a single night, 
Decaying from excess of light. 

:|c * * * * 

There is a pearl so rare, so pure. 
It can the eye of God endure ; 
'Tis- found within that shoreless sea, 
Whose echo fills eternity. 
Though spheres evanish in a trice. 
Still gleams the pearl of peerless price. 

A.D. 1869. 



1 84 MARY'S GIFTS. 



MARY'S GIFTS. 

To Mary C. S. 



The first sweet gift you gave me 

Was a modest, chaste bouquet ; 
It has faded, but its fragrance 

Will never pass away. 
For memory still restores again 

To every flower its hue, 
And the cheering smile you gave with it, 

Each hour reflects anew. 
'Twas a bashful prophet from above, 
Foretelling of our coming love. 

IT. 

Still a costlier gift you gave me. 

Priceless beyond all measure, — 
A pure, unwon, unwedded heart, 

A gem, a sky-bom treasure. 
It is sealed in my soul's casket. 

There I've hallowed it a home ; 
'Tis now a wooed and wedded heart, — 

'Tis wedded to my own. 
And thy jeweled finger marks the bliss 
Of our first, our dear espousal kiss. 



SONG OF THE ATLANTIC CABLE. 185 

III. 

Another gift you give me now, — 

A lustrous tress in braid, — 
From the golden home of sunlight 

I know it must have strayed. 
The playmate with your latest hope, 

I kiss the chainlike token, 
And plight you, like our chain of love. 

Its links shall ne'er be broken. 
For seventeen summers it was thine, 

Forever, now, the boon is mine. 

Earlville, Jan. 22d, 1S60. 



THE SONG OF THE ATLANTIC CABLE. 

I. 

Drop me down in the deep, while the sea is asleep. 

And a spell is upon the tide, 
For the Tempest King now poises his wing. 

Like an eaglet in his pride ; 
Now the vaulting waves are fettered slaves. 

And aloft is a drowsy sky. 
And the sea-nymphs woo the boundless blue. 

And the rainbow rides on high. 
Down with Astreas, in brilliant bowers. 
Festooned with clusters of living flowers. 
Where the sea anemone veils its bloom. 



1 36 SO.VG OF THE ATLANTIC CABLE. 

And the sea-star lightens the spectral gloom, 

Where the snowy star-coral buds and blows, 

Is the lonely abode where I seek repose. 

In the silent heart of the secret sea, 

The Atlantic Cable's home should be; 

Through his gemmed, arcades I shall thread along, 

And click, click, click, is my only song. 

II. 

How the sea upbraids whosoever invades 

The realm of his marvelous home. 
As he dashes his wrath across the path 

To his palace beneath the foam ! 
How the siren raves as she rouses the waves. 

And musters the white-plumed band. 
While forward they urge the serried surge. 

Till it halts on the treacherous strand ! 
But the spiry sea-urchin ceases his rout. 
And the cuttle-fish twines its arms about. 
And a myriad mermaids around me clamber. 
Bury me deep in odorous amber. 
And the Nereids crouch, as the winds unfold 
Their fleeting tresses of green and gold, 
And Triton hushes his boisterous gong, 
Charmed by the ''click" of my wizard song; 
For the ocean monarch divides with me 
The azure throne of the moaning sea. 

HI. 

Strange nectar I sip from the Orient's lip, 
While the morning is at her mass ; 



SONG OF THE ATLANTIC CABLE. 187 

There's a tremulous chime from the sentries of time, 

As the Pyramids' pomp I pass. 
And I never blanch at the avalanche, 

And I mock at the cataract's roar. 
While the glaciers gaze, in their mute amaze. 

At my march to the murmuring shore. 
And I hug the hemispheres in my grasp ; 
I bridge the continents with my clasp ; 
The New World's hope and the Old World's toil 
I wrap in the folds of my lightning coil ; 
I girdle the globe as it whirls aghast, 
Prometheus is unbound at last, 
And bears his magical spark for me 
Through the lustrous depths of the conquered sea. 
Bearing his burden of love along, 
Cheered by the "click" of the cable's song. 

IV. 

I have shaken hands with the golden lands, 

. I have kissed the emerald plain ; 

And my thunders speak from Laramie's peak. 

To their kindred across the main. 
Where the sun meets the hilltops I hurry along, 

With my music I startle the Oread throng. 
And I dream, as I play with the pearly sway. 

That the goldfishes past me glide, — 
'Ti's the voice of the sea that arouses me, 

Tempting me thus with a bribe : 
"As age unto age my memory links, 
I will tell how the Nummulite builded the Sphinx ; 
You shall hurl the dart of the Belemnite 



i88 SOJVG OF THE ATLANTIC CABLE. 

At the lily flower-fish, Encrinite ; 
You shall see where the Tribolite troop was born ; 
You shall hear how the Ammonite wound his horn ; 
And yoar highway for thought shall be ever free, 
If you whisper your secrets all to me. 

V. 

" Lost races rest in ray desolate breast, 

While the centuries ebb and flow ; 
At my terrible beck the waif and the wreck. 

Like my vassals, come and go. 
How I gracefully roll to some far-off goal, 

When fancying I am free, 
But I writhe like a snake when my eyes awake, 

And the beach imprisons me ! 
Yet no triumphs of man on my bosom abide ; 
I hide with a bubble his baubles of pride. 
My choristers chant him a requiem meet, 
And the white waves weave him a winding-sheet. 
No knells ever knoll, no bells ever toll, 
No priest of the deep sings a psalm for his soul, 
And no marble column or trysting-tree 
Ever marks his grave in the scornful sea. 
But my realms you shall rule with my trident strong, 
If you'll tell me the theme of your mystic song." 

VI. 

'' Proud braggart, hold ! They will never be told 

To your ear, O flattering sea ! 
No flash will impart to your rapturous heart 

What mortals have whispered to me; 



CHILDHOOD THOUGHTS. 

Then shroud me in mist, let the surf be whist 

On its silvery couch no more, 
Lest some gossiping shell my secrets shall tell 

To the tattling, echoing shore. 
Rest, reveling sea ! No longer carouse ! 
Bring coy Amphitrite, your timorous spouse. 
The lightning has left its cloud-built home 
To dwell in our palace beneath the foam ; 
And we will abide with your beautiful bride 
In our halls of wonder under the tide. 
Thus ever through life some mystical thing 
Enters and heralds itself our king, — 
Unfathomed, but felt wherever we be, 
A hidden cable under our sea." 



189 



CHILDHOOD THOUGHTS. 

I. 

Hast thou ne'er stood unconscious on a spot. 
And felt (as quick as coinage of a thought. 
As then would glimmer on your dizzy brain 
The impress, almost gone, of childhood's zeal) 
A weight of feeling lie upon your breast, 
Yet could not flee the fond spot's magic power, 
Nor drive away its charm e'en by a tear ? 

II. 

Hast not forgot that e'en you were a child. 

Till some such wand touched memory's mystic cord, 



190 CHILDHOOD THOUGHTS. 

Which sounded as it did in youth betimes ? 
Like music's stray notes come in dreary hours, 
And almost seem themselves but light-winged dreams 
Until their fingers touch us and we wake ? 

III. 
We breathed then on the surface of young life. 
And raised up bubbles, bright and rainbowed o'er. 
But did they stay till we could analyze 
Their beauty? No; they burst before our eyes ; 
And the fond thought of it is all that's left 
To sweeten up the gall that all must wring. 
And drink in manhood from life's bitter cup. 

IV. 

Life's burnished picture, then, was made of lights ; 

Reality has since his pencil dipped 

In purple gloom, and daubed it o'er with shades. 

Childhood's thoughts were wove as spiders weave 

Their webs, so frail, so delicately fine, 

That we must hang them on to heavier thoughts. 

Or the least stir in our wild brains will brush 

The beauty of the bright thing whence it came. 

v. 
Still even this, so gossamer-like web, 
Has borne the dewdrops of life's early mom 
That glittered in our childhood's hours ; and we love 
To nurse them (as a mother will her child) 
Until the sickly things fade slow away. 
Crushed by the weight of their own nothingness, — 
And e'en that nothingness is wondrous sweet. 

June 27th, 1844. 



NOT AT HOME. 

NOT AT HOME. 

To M. J. E. 

" Maidens, like moths, are ever caught with glare, 
And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair." 

Byron. 

I. 

If ever you should have a suitor, 

'Twould be then very useful, I know, 
If one should take trouble to tutor 

You when to say Yes, and when No ; 
How to get rid of him without much bother. 

How to run and hide when he would come, 
How to teach your sweet sister or mother 

To simper so nice, "Not at home." 

II. 

Beware, dear, of two-penny lawyers. 

As temperance people of rum ; 
Beware, as a boat is of sawyers. 

Beware, as a fop is of duns ; 
For, if people should ask of each other, 

How keeps he his flesh upon bone ? 
La! he's kept by a father or brother, — 

Say, to such one, my dear, '' Not at home." 

III. 

If he curses with grace dear old Harry, 
If he's Protestant priest, or of Rome, 



191 



192 NOT AT HOME. 

If you've money, my dear, he will marry, 
To him never say, *' Not at home." 

But if he's a filthy mechanic. 

And works in wood, iron, or stone, 

And lives on a crust and Neshannock, 
Why, dear, always say, '' Not at home." 

IV. 

No matter if schooled at a college, 

Or, if of poetical turn. 
He's grasped at all beautiful knowledge 

Found in Byron, or Moore, or in Burns; 
No matter how wise or how funny. 

How learned in old Greece or old Rome, 
Unless he has plenty of money. 

Tell mamma to say, *' Not at home." 



What if he has lip fit for kissing, 

Of exquisite curl and of glow. 
Why, dear, if the money is missing, 

Why, always, dear, always say, ''No." 
What if nose or if brow be of contour 

Worthy chisel of M. Angelo, 
If he's poor he is foolish to woo her, 

For certain it is she'll say no. 

VI. 

If his portrait is fit to be painted 
By Raphael, or Rubens, or West, 



NOT AT HOME. 193 

If he's poor, dear, by you he's not wanted ; 

For the life of you never say Yes. 
In short, if he be of a beauty, 

'Twould drive Venus de Medici mad, 
I think, dear, it would be your duty 

To ask, "Is he rich?" of your dad. 

/ 

VII. 

If he struts with a gentleman-air. 

If he touches his hat when he bows. 
If he dress a la mode to a hair. 

Be sure, dear, and never say '' No." 
Does he go to cotillons and balls 

With the upper crust and the bon ton. 
Is he rich, and the rage at a waltz. 

Tell your mamma to say ''You're at home." 

VIII. 

No matter, indeed, if a dozen 

Of other heirs' lives must abate. 
Or a half-score of poverized cousins. 

Before he can reach his estate j 
And what if it's only a rumor, 

'' He may be worth thousands or so?" 
Just take him, dear, while in the humor, 

And be sure, dear, and never say No. 

IX. 

Can he talk of a '' Lady Book" tale, 
Can he talk of a fash'nable tune, 
R 13 



194 NOT AT HOME. 

Then what if on whisky or ale 
He will oft get as drunk as a loon 

Ere he talks to a lady of piety ? 

If he calls at the shop of S. Holmes, 

No matter, he is ^'good society," 

Your mamma must say "You're at home.' 

\ 

X. 

If he "'caper so nimbly," the rest 

Is found in Bill Shakspeare, you know, 
Be sure, dear, to always say "Yes," 

And be sure, dear, never say "No." 
If he play well the exquisite knight 

Of the sofa, and thrums the guitar 
To a lisp, oh, so soft and so light. 

And tells you you've eyes like a star, 

XI. 

Think of sweet-scented fountains, my dear, 

That play both by day and by night ; 
Think of wine, harp, and gold chandelier 

That throws out its dim, mellow light ; 
Yes, give rein to your bookish romance, 

Live in ages gone by long ago ; 
Think of skies in the land south of France, 

And of Muses, but don't you say " No.'' 

XII. 

If of "upper class" our belles are lip 
They'll talk of their granddad or dame, 



OUR NATIVE LAND. 

And boast of their relationship 

If from stable or kitchen they came ; 

If, for crime, they were sent to the stocks, 
If a suitor is poor, ten to one 

Her ma, with a sneer, when he knocks. 
Will answer, "Indeed, not at home !" 

XIII. 

Who cares for these nice, brainless paddies ? 

Who would court a "bon ton" ignoramus: 
Who cares for their opulent daddies ? 

Who cares for their " not-at-home" mammies? 
Not I. Let me be e'er so poor, 

Let sunshine or storm, or both, come, 
I never will knock at their doors. 

And their mammas can't say, " Not at home. " 
December nth, 1844. 



195 



OUR NATIVE LAND. 

I. 

One land there is, the land that gave us birth, 
The young, untrammeled wonder of the West ; 

Formed great by nature in a freak of mirth. 
We feel 'tis somehow holier than the rest. 

Her skies look bluer than all other skies \ 
We breathe her air freer than other air ; 



196 OUR NATIVE LAND. 

Her mountain-tops seem robed in greener dyes ; 
We tread her sacred soil with prouder air. 

11. 

Her streams look purer than all others are, 

As on they leap with music and with glee ; 
The winds that o'er us sweep are sweeter far, 

And seem to know they fan the brave and free ; 
Her sunlight opens out with richer gush, 

And e'en seems conscious that on us it flames, 
It leaves our land at eve with beauteous blush, 

And seems to promise it will come again. 

III. 

Her calmer moonlight seemeth to caress 

(As softly o'er us falls its mellow sheen), 
And folds our scenery in a calmer dress 

Than that land's scenes where less of freedom's seen ; 
And when, with hope, we leave our native coast, 

Her landscapes linger longest on our view ; 
Till hamlet, spire, and hills, at last, are lost, 

And look like distant clouds of hazy hue. 

IV. 

When years are fled, again we near that shore, 

Again we gaze our native hills to spy ; 
The spell of home and country comes once more, 

And then is felt a strange and mystic tie ; 
For sires who fell do there sleep side by side, 

That hero host, whose van young freedom led ; 



/ MET HER ONCE. 



197 



We think of them with feelings of strange pride, 
Such as ne'er come to friends of sceptred dead. 

V. 

There is a symbol that we always cheer, 

Revered alike by veteran and by child, 
Whether in mock of peace, in unstirred air 

It droops, or streams in war-storms howling wild. 
Yes, there's a land, — the land that gave us birth, 

The young and glorious giant of the West 
And it must stand a beacon to the earth, 

For it is happier, dearer, than the rest. 

May i8th, 1844. 



R* 



I MET HER ONCE. 

To E. M. 
I. 

I MET her once, that fairy one. 

And her loveliness did make 
(As spell-bound still, I lingered on). 

My sense of beauty ache. 
While my eye fed on the luxury 

There was holiday in the heart. 
But it changed to a Circean mockery 

When I thought we had to part. 



198 / ^lET HER ONCE. 

II. 

I met her once, but never knew 

Her home, nor name, nor station ; 
But she had an eye of witching blue. 

And a lip for fascination. 
The ocean shell's most delicate tint 

Was the drapery of her cheek, 
Its dimple was Cupid's kiss-print, 

Impressed in a dallying freak. 

III. 

And I never knew, where in the world, 

She got her imperial brow. 
Or the wilderness of golden curls 

Down her beautiful neck, I vow. 
It seemeth now a mystery 

How joy did wed my heart, 
How 'twas widowed by an agony, 

When I knew we had to part. 

IV. 

We parted, I and that bright one. 

And since I've never seen 
The incarnated paragon 

Of passion's wildest dream. 
We parted ; but, to fancy's eye, 

Oft memory will unfold her, 
For a model to shape an idol by, 

Whose shrine may never moulder. 
May 19th, 1845. 



LINES TO A DAFFODIL. 



199 



LINES TO A DAFFODIL. 

I. 

Vainglorious flower of sickly hue, 

Why rear thy yellow head, 
And boldly for our praises sue, 

Almost ere winter's fled? 
Conceited flower, thou judgest ill, 

To think that Love is such an elf, 
As showers her gift on a dafl'odil, 

Who loved alone himself ! 

II. 

For Echo loved you once, 'tis said, 

But no return was found. 
When slowly out her warm life ebbed, 

And faded into sound. 
And now in vales she dwells so coy, 

Where gloom outspreads her pall. 
And, waking, answers to each noise, 

Thinking 't may be thy call. 

III. 

Your image in the mirror-stream 
First touched your selfish heart ; 

You nursed the image, it would seem, 
Till shot by death's pale dart. 



200 TO M. C. S. 

The gods, some say, by pity moved, 
Some say to show their power, 

Turned you, who only self could love, 
Into such ghastly flower. 



TO M. C. S. 



I. 



There's a gay little bird, all glossy and bright, 
And he springs from his couch so soon, 

And prepares for his flight, through the first sunlight, 
To the spot where the wild flowers bloom. 



II. 



And his plumage he dips in the diamond dew, 
Whilst inhaling the morn's first breath. 

And he ruffles his wing, of a glittering hue, 
Ere he hies o'er the blossoming heath. 



III. 

When the bee still dreams, and asleep is the thrush, 
Then he woos with his humming song. 

Till each bud that he nears opens out with a blush, 
And he steals a quick kiss and is gone. 



THE AMERICAN SOLDIER'S FUNERAL. 20 1 

IV. 

He hums the same air to the bluebell and rose, 

As light o'er the lea he doth move, 
When their sweets he hath sipped he ne'er again goes 

To the flower he once feigned to love. 

V. 

Now, if you'd give me a kiss or a word. 

E'en a smile or a thought alone. 
Think you I'd fly off", like the false humming-bird? 

No, I'd cling to no flower but one. 
Earlville, November 12th, 1859. 



THE AMERICAN SOLDIER'S FUNERAL. 



Wrap him up in that flag. What a winding-sheet 

For the hero's dreamless form, 
Who fell where the friend and the foeman meet. 
And death hurried along on rein-winged feet, 

Through the din of the battle storm ! 

II. 

Wrap him up in its folds. Let its olive-leaf 

Be the sign of its fadeless doom ; 
What a peaceful type of the charnel-house wreath 



202 THE AMERICAN SOLDIER'S FUNERAL. 

Let the cloud-cradled bird, bearing arrows sheathed, 
Guard his way to the cypress gloom. 

III. 

Wrap him up ! And alone let the freeman's sigh 

The folds round him softly fan ; 
Let its glory burst bright from its azure sky. 
And its stars, stooping down from their home on high, 

Light his soul to the Eden-land, 

IV. 

Round him let its lustrous stripes be flung, 

While his plume above shall wave. 
Let the fife's wild scream be his requiem song, 
And the drum be his knell, as they pass slow along 

To the hallowed home of the brave. 

V. 

Wind him round with that sheet. What a gorgeous 
shroud 

For the soldier's sacred form ! 
Let a patriot band, in sad silence, crowd 
'Round his grave, and give him three volleys loud ; 

For he fell in the battle's storm ! 
February 17th, 1844. 



TO A. H. M. 203 



TO A. H. M. 



I. 



The heart's strange cords are all unstrung, 

They speak as ne'er before ; 
And from the wildest string is wrung 

The tale, "I've loved thee more 
Than the ideal being of the dream 

That tinged my boyhood's hour, 
And made my fond and first -love seem 

To charm with magic power. 

II. 

" I've thought of thee, and loved, as soon 

As the wild-bird woke in the lawn, 
When the noiseless spell of the purple gloom 

Was broke by the rosy dawn ; 
I've thought of thee when the twilight's hue 

Cast its mantle o'er each scene. 
When the stars shone bright in the vaulted blue, 

'Twas the hour to love and dream. 

III. 

"When night's dim pall hung o'er the world. 

And slumber closed mine e'e, 
I oft have seen my idol girl. 

And dreamed soft dreams of thee. 



204 ^^^ ALBUM OF M. S. 

I've thought of thee, and loved the while 

I've gazed with wistful stare, 
To catch one sweet returning smile 

That might be lingering there. 

IV. 

^' I've thought of thee and loved thee, 

And breathed the burning sigh 
"When thou wert absent from me. 

But why? I know not why; 
But my heart must still its warm love breathe, 

Still feel the hallowed flame. 
And memory still shall bind its wreath 

Round thy endearing name. ' ' 



IN ALBUM OF M. S. 



Oh, make me a home where the shadows retreat, 

In a wild and noiseless vale, 
AVhere the echoes dream, and repeat in their sleep, 

The tumbling waterfall's tale ; 
Or the echoes awake and listen in vain, 
To tattle the streamlet's murmuring strain, 
For each pearl-drop creeps to its home so still. 
Like it wanted to baffle the echo's will. 
There make me a home. 



IN ALBUM OR M. S. 



II. 



205 



Oh, let me awake with the morning, and count 

The purple streaks and gray; 
Let me watch, as the sunbeams gush from their fount, 

Like jets of gilded spray. 
How bright the dew-beads on the grass-blades then 
Will sparkle like many an emerald gem, 
As morn's vapory veil, on gossamer wing, 
Careers them away like a living thing ! 
Yes, let me awake. 

III. 

Oh, leave me alone, when the snow-piled clouds 

Will reflect the crimson flush 
Of the day god, leaving the west so proud, 

With a promise and a blush. 
When the glen is robed in the twilight hue. 
When the spangles dance on the vaulted blue. 
When the night-breeze touches its harp and sings, 
When the ghost-stars flit on their streaming wings, 
Then leave me alone. 

June 2ist, 1844. 



2o6 ENGLAND. 



ENGLAND. 



I. 



The laugh of the Gaul doth England fear ? 

Never ! She points the while 
To the tomb of the Gaul who had no peer, 

To a foughten field and a rocky isle. 
And the trump and the drum doth Albion fear? 

Never ! Where man e'er trod 
Her ceaseless reveille meets the ear, 

And greets, at his coming, the Gheber's God 

II. 

The curse of the world doth Britain heed ? 

Never ! She proffers peace. 
But to felon and foe a kindred need, 

An undug grave and the vulture's feast, 
She scorns them now, and for evermore, 

And forever, ever can brave 
Their curses, while on her spray-beat shore 

Falls never the curse of a slave. 

November yth, 1845. 



TO A. S. 207 



TO A. S. 

I. 

And have I loved thee ? Yes, 

Though strange it seems, yet still 'tis true. 

You are dear to me ; I must confess 
I once dared think you loved me, too. 

II. 

But then another thought there came, 
'Twas traced upon thy deep blue e'e. 

That you no longer was the same. 
And I was not beloved by thee. 

III. 

And then there came that burning thought 
To dash the vision from my brain, 

To write across thy name " forgot," 
And never think of thee again. 

IV. 

But still there is a magic power 

Which binds me to thee yet. 
That calls thee to my mind each hour, 

And says, ''you can't forget." 
1846. 



2o8 IMPROMPTU TO M. C. G. 



IMPROMPTU TO MARY C. G. 

I. 

Lady Mary sat in her sumach-bower, 

Like a sentinel, watching her river roll by ; 

Gazing intent, through a summer hour, 
At the waterfall wooing her pensive eye. 

II. 

But the sum.ach-boughs no longer are green. 
And the waterfall's changed into icicles now, 

And the river steals on to the ocean unseen. 
Still the sentinel lady has hope on her brow. 

III. 

Come forth, fragrant May; grow green. Sumach-leaf; 

Pretty Cataract, dash down once more to her view; 
Glide on, thoughtful river, and hush all our grief, 

Lady Mary is waiting and watching for you. 

" Riverside," Ottawa, III., 

Sunday, June ist, 1862. 



IN ALBUM OF E. W. S. 



209 



IN ALBUM OF E. W. S. 

I. 

Who's read "Now westlin' winds," forsooth 

Knows well, I ween, already, 
This scene is meant for naught, in truth, 

But Bob Burns and his Peggy. 

II. 

The cot and cloudless sky are seen. 
And swallows twittering cheerly, 

The fern and scented birch sae green, 
The heath and waving barley. 

III. 

How could you put, you wheedling rogue. 
Such whims in young girls' heads. 

And write them rhymes in Scottish brogue 
But ne'er once thought to wed? 

IV. 

I own 'twas sweet and right to tease, 
And hold them in such thraldom. 
But now we kiss them when we please, 
Besides, write in their albums. 
May nth, 1844. 

S* 14 



210 MARY. 



MARY. 

I. 

Mary! 'Tis the sweetest ni~e by far 

That ever a woman wore j 
It sits on nieni'rj*s wave like a star. 

And points to the past once more. 

n. 

And -^f :>_:"'•: :f :-.e zre?.Tnlike words again, 

Of V :., -i :r :: , : i love. 
We : : : :" the dead as we name that name. 

And of one in the clime above. 

ni. 

Maiy! 'Twas the gentle name that heard 
(In the hour of death and gloom) 

The last sad tones of the Saviour's word. 
What name was first at the tomb? 

Ottawa, 1S62, 



IN ALBUM OF S. A. B. 211 



IMPROMPTU. 

To R. P. 

I. 

What means that restless, wildest gaze 
That ever sat on woman's e'e? 

'Twould brain of saint or sinner craze, — ; 
Say, does it linger thus for me ? 

II.' 

Say, is that rosy smile for me 

That plays so fondly round thy brow. 

And seems to say, ''just come and see" ? 
Come, come, and tell me now. 

February nth, 1844. 



IN ALBUM OF S. A. B. 



The day god sprang from his rosy rest 
(So runs at least my story). 

Love dyed a flow'r in his crimson mist. 
It was the morning-glory. 



212 TO MARY. 



II. 



Bright Venus, sure, was the herald star, 
When that gorgeous flow' r was born, 

She shook some beams from her glittering car, 
And streaked the flow' r of morn. 



III. 



I love that flow'r, it's so like love ; 

Its tendrils twine tight to its bow'r ; 
Like love it turns to its star above. 

Like love it dies, — child of an hour. 



TO MARY. 

On her Twenty-fifth Birthday. 



Clotho has spun, of brilliant thread. 
Another birthday o'er your head \ 
Her fingers awake a magical sound, 
Whirling life's beautiful wheel around ; 
While Lachesis, chanting a merry song, 
Allots you years, so joyous and long ; 
Unchangeable Atropos has fled, 
And loathes to return to cut the thread. 
September nth, 1866, 



ACROSTIC TO AN ALBUM. 



213 



ACROSTIC TO AN ALBUM NEVER PRE- 
SENTED. 

I. 

Joy to thee ever ! to thy pilgrim task 
Away, a few brief years will close thy toil. 
Now crave thy boons for love or friendship's sake, 
Enfolding them in warm and honeyed words. 

II. 

How thy fair guardian will hereafter love, 
E'en when her own bright star will be in w^ane ! 
Now and anon to muse upon thy page, 
Granting to all a thought, to some a sigh. 

III. 

Long after Death's dark night empales ashes. 
And sprite, and Time's unriddled all their dooms, 
Names thus remembered may throw o'er the past 
Dim light, and make her better, happier far. 

November 27th, 1844. 



THE END. 



'V 





4 

li 




•■ i 







^ 









J.-*" ' 



i> '■ 



'Hi 



c 



